Bastersun
by Manuuk7
Summary: Hoshi and T'Pol disappear during a not-so-routine scientific mission. Who took them, where were they taken, and how are they going to get out? No slash. Also appearances by Archer, Reed (minor) and Tucker (minor). Couple of TnT scenes.
1. A Look Inside

_An army of ghosts marched on the ridges and valleys of the land, covering many square feet of land. For it must have been an army of ghosts, no gathering of beings could have achieved such a uniformity of look and form. They were staggering forward, haggardly, their feet bumping against invisible steps in the mud. Mud was what they were made of. Each member of the army looked the same, tan layers of muds plastered all over their arms and legs and bodies, hiding the drab short tunics they wore, of the same color as the mud. The mud kept its march upwards, crawling up their neck, covering their face and their heads, entering into noses and ears, there was no plastering of hair, just the whites of eyes shining in the drab tans. None of the ghosts had hair. Many of them had rounded bellies swollen with more ghosts, who would be born covered in mud. Once in a while, one of them staggered forward or backward more than usual and fell in the mud. Some of those got up again, a layer of wet clay added onto the layers that already weighed on them. Those that fell splayed tended not to get up again, sometimes laying where they were, breathing the mud through their mouth and nose and eyes. The other ghosts would just walk on them in their march forward. The yielding bodies offered a dry foothold for a little while, until the combined weight of the walking army burrowed their bodies further into the mud and they were no more than funnel-shaped depressions marking the lives that had been._

 _Over and behind the ghosts, clouds rolled over the horizon, ominous clouds rumbling in the distance. The mud ghosts would slow down once in a while and quickly look over their shoulder and up at the sky, assessing. If the clouds were far enough they would keep trudging ahead, pulling their feet off the mud with a smacking sound before plopping them down again in the sinking softness, exhausting themselves in an endless pas-de-deux that brought them closer to a final fall. When the clouds approached, the ghosts would run to the sides, sliding across the vast field of mud, trying to scurry away like an army of ants on an oily surface, before the skies opened in a hail of laser beams and bullets that haphazardly found their mark. Whoever was flying those attack planes was doing it in a lazy, desultory way, not so much looking to exterminate as to push the herd forward, to keep it moving through the mud, to wrangle the ghosts in a unified direction. That direction was taking them away from large rectangle buildings that burned far in the distance behind them, sending clouds of billowing black smoke up in the air, where they obscured the planes._

 _The mud fields ended at a river, more a gathering of flat shallows than a true river worth its name, but a river nonetheless. The mud ghosts who tried and crossed the river were mowed down by hidden guns on the other side. So they huddled at the edge of the river. More and more ghosts joined their ranks, all made of the same mud, until the army of ghosts actually became an army. The planes did not pursue them all the way to the river and the guns did not bother to pick them up on the other side. The mud marshes were a no-man's land where even the mud ghosts did not want to land. They waited until there was enough of them for a village, then a community, then a small town. And when their number became too large and they would be pushed into the wet shallows anyway, they crossed the water in gushing waves of bodies, clambering over those in front that were felled by the guns, their numbers too great to fully annihilate, until a portion of them reached the other side. And then the guns would be still and the mud ghosts would disappear in the surrounding vegetation, while another army of mud ghosts congregated at the edge of the river behind them._

 _In a spot at the top of the no-man's land, two mud ghosts were quietly whispering. The rounded edge of the shorter one spoke of a young one to be born. The taller one had the angular curves of skin and bones. Only their eyes shone._

 _"If we cross the river, we will be perceived to be the other side again. We will end up in the same situation, except that our captors will be our former cellmates" The taller one was saying._

 _\- What do you suggest we do?" the smaller one was visibly exhausted, both from the weight of the fetus and from the fatigue of the muddy escape._

 _"The Nitns are pushing all of us into Ritumfa territory. We do not belong to either." the taller mud ghost turned its head, looking at the river of shallows as it bent around a corner, a short distance away. "We can follow the river upstream instead of going where they are trying to lead us."_

 _"Do you know where the river comes from?" the short one asked plaintively._

 _"I do not recall it showing up on the maps. It must have been a secondary geographical feature. But the maps showed that the Narmkafehrs also share the delta. The river may lead to their land."_

 _The short mud ghost sat on its haunches in the mud, Asian-style, belly perched precariously on her knees. "And how do we know it's not going to be worse than what we have been through," she asked._

 _"We do not, Ensign" the tall mud ghosts answered, "but we do know there is a high probability we will get killed if we proceed forward. We are exchanging a certainty for possibilities."_

 _The short one nodded. "So what do we do?"_

 _"When the next group rushes the other side, we will take advantage of the general confusion to follow the river upstream," the taller one said. She looked down to where the shorter one was crouching "How are you doing, Hoshi?"_

 _The shorter mud ghost laughed, a short harsh laugh "How about I tell you once we get out of this mess, Commander. Perhaps by then I'll actually know."_


	2. The Attack

_Star Trek intellectual property belongs to Paramount. Star Trek intellectual property belongs to Paramount. Star Trek intellectual property belongs to Paramount._

AN INDETERMINATE AMOUNT OF TIME BEFORE…

The three officers were rushing through the deserted town. The shrill alarm of the curfew had already rang and not a soul could be seen through the streets, which would have made their progress fast and easy even if the town had not for all intents and purposes been abandoned. Phlox was leading the way in the dark night, T'Pol behind him and Hoshi last. T'Pol was guided by the echoes of their footsteps, eyesight dimmed by the night.

If everything went well, they would get to the shuttle in time and report their findings to the Verklaevs who would then in turn bring the report to the Overarching Council sitting on Verklaev. The Greater Kingdom of Nint was a reluctant participant on the Council but economic necessities dictated that they at least pretend to play nice with others. As a result they paid lip allegiance to the Council, showing through body language and dress their self-believed superiority and marked disdain for the other races of Dalgorts. Not that the racial differences among the Dalgorts were exactly obvious. To the Humans, one Denobulan and one Vulcan, the differences were skin-deep. Or more accurately hair deep. The three races were all humanoid, all were barrel-chested with shaggy manes of hair extending down their shoulders, but the Nint had bicolor black and yellow manes while those of the Verklaev were yellow and the Namkarfeh's were uniformly dark. That apparently was a profoundly meaningful difference for the Nints.

Single-mindedly obsessed with racial purity, the Nint viewed their bi-color manes as the expression of superior genetic make-up and abilities. In a desperate bid to preserve the purity of their blood lines, they followed a strictly isolationist policy, minimizing any contacts between their citizens and the other races, and refusing to use any technology that might take them offworld. Unless said technology was helpful in furthering their isolationist objectives. Such as a defensive web of highly sophisticated satellites in a geostationary position, preventing direct access to – or departure from - their soil.

The Verklaevs were slightly better disposed towards contacts with other species, though only slightly, it seemed Dalgorts' isolationist tendencies had a genetic component. The Verklaevs willingness to at least encounter and more commonly trade with other species made them the dominant race on Dalgort. Which in turn convinced them of their moral superiority and disposed them towards intervening in the internal affairs of their Nint and Narmkafehr neighbors. The Verklaevs were the ones who had reached out to Starfleet through unofficial channels, requesting the intervention of expert scientists for a preliminary inquiry that needed to remain of the utmost secrecy. A native people who occupied part of the Nint world, the Arumids, were disappearing. They seemed to have gone missing from the area where they had traditionally resided and their numbers had declined beyond any reasonable expectation.

This was a matter of interest to the Verklaevs, who saw themselves as the enlightened seer of Planet Dalgort, though their Nint and Narmkafehr neighbors would have more readily said they were busybodies who should mind their own business. The Nints vehemently denied any knowledge of or involvement in what happened to the native people within their shores. Given the differences in facts or opinions, only the Overarching Council could launch an investigation, but the Council refused to take such a step without proof that the decline in the Arumid numbers was not genetic or medical in nature.

So in a bid to influence the Council, the Verklaev has asked Starfleet to very discreetly, extremely discreetly, send a small research team down to the area occupied by the Arumid and report on their findings. If there were findings, the report of completely neutral external observers, which happened to be a Denobulan doctor for medical or genetic findings, a communication expert for spoken and unspoken communication with the Arumid, and a Vulcan science officer for all the rest, would allow the Verklaevs to turn the issue into an official matter with the Overarching Council and push the Council to act.

But due to the Nints racial and isolationist sensitivities, the preliminary investigation had to be done in the utmost secrecy. There would be no uniforms, no communicators, and scanners would be provided by the Verklaev, who had already prepared a back-up story of errant alien scientists who had foolishly followed up on an interest in obscure forms of fauna in spite of warnings not to venture into Nint territory. As a result, the three officers also had to make sure to capture a sufficient number of fairly uninteresting scans of humdrum animal life in order to establish a believable cover.

Their twelve hours on the Nint world had already given them plenty of data which they needed to review and analyze so that they could prepare a final report. The city they were traversing, a densely packed township of a few thousand units bordered by well-tended farmland slowly going fallow, was pretty much deserted. Their discrete examinations from afar during daytime had revealed no sign of life, as if the whole village had gone to a protracted sleep from the heat of the midday sun, and was not waking up. They had seen no children, no domestic animals, no activity, no hovercrafts rumbling by, spreading billowing clouds of dust as they passed. A whole village could not dematerialize out of the blue. Their foray through the countryside had shown further signs of abandonment, items and equipment that talked to activity suddenly interrupted. In the absence of humanoid life presence and under the thorough guidance of T'Pol, they had started an extensive inventory and analysis of the soil, climate, ground, vegetation, animal life, microbial life, geological transformations, radiation, and any and everything that could explain the disappearance of a village. Or a species.

But before they could present their report on the disappearance of the Arumid, the neutral external observers needed to get off Nint. Transporting directly to Enterprise was not an option given the defensive web system over Nint. The Verklaevs knew that the system that powered the Nint satellites was down for nineteen minutes every twelve hours and had developed an algorithm that could exactly predict those breaks. Which meant that a shuttle could slide in through the defense network once every 12 hours, pick up whoever they needed to in a hurry and high-tail it out, so long as they made the round-trip in less than nineteen minutes.

They needed to get to the shuttle before the rendezvous time or they would have to hide for another twelve hours while waiting for the next pick-up. More time for scans, but also more time for their presence to be discovered by the Nint. And even though they had a back-up story, and as per the agreement with the Verklaevs, no communication equipment and nothing that could be traced back to Starfleet, there remained the possibility of an interplanetary incident which would damage Stafleet's reputation along with that of the Verklaevs. And of having to explain to an irate Archer how his First Officer and his Chief Medical Officer and his Communications Officer all managed to be late for a planetside lift. There would be reports to be filed, possible reprimands, and the chances that Archer would ever let them down on another planet without a full contingent of armed guards would dwindle to that of a snowball in hell.

This was going through the mind of the trio as they walked at a brisk pace, intent on covering the remaining three miles in the minimum amount of time. They should have been rendered at the pick-up destination with plenty of time to spare, but Phlox had had to try and capture an exotic breed of fire-breathing lizard, and failed, and Hoshi had gotten engrossed into deciphering the language engraved on an old well, which was neither Nint nor current Arumid, and their Commanding Officer had been single-mindedly engrossed into scanning the workings of an entire planet on a hand-held scanner in a half-day. So now the three of them were rushing straight through the town, not bothering to hide.

Phlox took a diagonal through the large square plaza that seemed to mark the heart of the village. The dim light from the moon was just enough for him to notice the line of a dozen or so bodies barring the way before he plopped right into them. He stopped, T'Pol and Hoshi a step behind him. Phlox turned back to look at T'Pol, who silently stared back at him. From what they could see in the shallow light of the moon the men in front of them were Arumids. Phlox nonchalantly put a hand in his pocket and surreptitiously turned his scanner on. The range was not optimal, but even at a few feet distance he would be able to get some readings.

The Arumids crowded closer to the Starfleet officers, starting to surround them. The leader of the pack spoke first "Who are you?"

"We are friends" Phlox replied "Are you Arumid? We have been looking for you. What happened to the village?"

"The Nints happened" the leader replied, as if this meant everything in the world. "Do you have food? Anything?" he went on, carefully letting his eyes roam over the tool belts and bulging pockets of the scientists.

The Starfleet trio crowded tighter together, knowing an attempted shakedown when they saw one. "We do not have anything of value" T'Pol spoke. "Now please step aside, we wish you no harm." She felt Phlox and Hoshi get into a defense position in her back so that the three of them were facing off the would-be thieves.

The alien sneered. "That is very funny. You can give us everything you have or we can take it, what do you prefer?"

Before he had even finished his question, his men attacked. Within seconds, four of the assailants had been dispatched by karate kicks, nerve pinches, and punches straight to places doctors knew would incapacitate them. There were still eight left, circling the three officers cautiously, now aware their prey had nails and teeth and a willingness to fight. Some of the attackers pulled out dagger-like weapons, obviously home-made but still lethal-looking. The Arumids attacked again. T'Pol turned in time to make out four of them converging on Hoshi, visibly the smallest in the group. Phlox was busy with two attackers. T'Pol dispatched one of her attackers, kicked the other off, grabbed one of Hoshi's assailant by the shoulder, rendering him unconscious. Before she had time to turn back, the assailant she had kicked off plunged a foot-long dagger into her shoulder. She screamed in pain as she fell to her knees while the blade kept going and came out on the other side. Everyone froze. The remaining Arumids took to their heels, obviously not used to carrying out their threats of bodily harm. The one with the dagger tore it out of T'Pol's shoulder and ran after them.

Phlox was already kneeling at T'Pol's side. The top of her civil unisuit was quickly becoming drenched with blood. "Can you walk?" he asked. She nodded in the dark, spoke through gritted teeth "I can." Phlox was looking at his scanner, shook his head. "You're losing a lot of blood" he said, "we have to hurry".

They took off at a run, which quickly slowed to a walk when it became obvious T'Pol was in no shape to run.


	3. Into Hiding

Phlox looked at the angle of the moon. The attack had delayed them and their only hope to make the rendezvous was to keep walking. It would take them another hour to get to the rendezvous point. If T'Pol continued to lose blood at the rate she did, she would pass out well before then, and they would not make the shuttle. If he stopped to stem the blood less, they would not make the shuttle. The command directives had been crystal clear. The shuttle would come back for them at 0215, lift off again at 0224 sharp and head back for the Enterprise, crew or no crew on board. Missing personnel could be the result of a myriad of factors, including, but not limited to, overindulgence of alcoholic beverages, accidents, attacks by the natives, and anything in between.

The next opening in the defensive satellite network was 1236. They all had taken careful note of the back-up time, none thinking they would ever come to use it. He did not know the time of the next break after that one. Perhaps next time they should come prepared with a schedule of all the breaks in cover for a week.

Thinking of preparedness brought him back to T'Pol. On a hunch, he asked "Do you know the schedule for the breaks in the defensive satellite network?" T'Pol was breathing heavily, obviously in pain, but she looked up "Covering what period of time? I only memorized the schedule for the next two weeks." Phlox nodded. He should have known.

He looked around. If they kept walking as planned, there was a strong possibility they would still be within the township limits when dawn broke, and blow their cover. That in itself was an unacceptable risk. The only solution was to get out of town as quickly as possible. Based on their earlier recognizance, he knew that the city stopped fairly quickly down the slope of the mountain, and that beyond the last walls that marked its boundaries were what had been well-tended and tidy fields of succulents and vegetables, low to the ground. And, snaking among those fields, as they were making their way over in the morning, he had seen a green ribbon of trees and tall reeds, taller than a man, and thought to himself at the time that it was impossible to know what was hiding in the middle of all that vegetation.

He turned to T'Pol and Hoshi "I know a place where we can hide." T'Pol turned towards the sound of his voice and he saw that now the upper half of her suit looked darker under the moonlight, drenched with blood. "This way" Phlox took the lead, walking swiftly downhill, followed by the more haphazard and hesitant gait of T'Pol. Hoshi was the sweep, holding back and making sure they wouldn't lose her along the way. This time they walked in the shadows whenever they could, Phlox keeping a nervous eye and ear out for any sign that the Arumids that had attacked them were coming back to finish the job. He suddenly noticed a very narrow alleyway between two houses, no wider than a man's shoulders. He quickly turned left into the alleyway, glancing swiftly behind to make sure that T'Pol and Hoshi were following.

The alleyway ended right at the edge of town, into the fields. It was probably a shortcut for farmers who wanted to tend their crops. Phlox could see the darker shade of the trees he was thinking about a few hundred yards away. It was a straight enough walk, though it would have to be done under the only protection of the moon. Their progress was made somewhat more hazardous by the uneven ground covered with patches of tall weeds. Phlox was holding T'Pol'sarm to help her over the rough terrain, and she was teetering alongside him, still breathing heavily but starting to dip into unconsciousness.

Phlox asked Hoshi to hold T'Pol while he scoped the area. He parted the tall reeds that hid everything behind them and stepped through. And almost fell down a short embankment into a hand-width brook that was leisurely winding its way at the bottom of what was by all appearances a large ditch. Phlox now understood the ribbon of lush vegetation. It was simply a marker for the brook, ready to transform into a roaring river in case rains swelled the stream, probably in the rainy season.

Scanning around to get a sense of their surroundings Phlox noticed an elevated band of soil and branches midway between the bed of the stream and the top of the bank, slightly upstream from where he was. He helped Hoshi bring T'Pol through and grabbing her by the elbow guided her to the platform, making her sit with a downward pressure. She sat cross-legged on the platform, letting him peel off her tunic to take a look at her shoulder. Phlox turned to Hoshi "I have to stop the bleeding. Can you spare an item of clothing, Ensign?"

Hoshi nodded, removing her top and stripping her black T-shirt off in one smooth gesture. She saw Plox's astonished look. "It's not Starfleet issue" she hissed. Geez, did he think she was some kind of just-graduated cadet. Starfleet was not the only game in town when it came to black T-shirts. She wordlessly handed it to Phlox, secretly mourning the waste of the expensive silk mix item as Phlox started tearing it apart into broad swaths of material. When he was done, he pulled a miniature medilaser from his belt.

Hoshi's jaw hit the floor. He was giving her grief about her T-shirt and he was carrying a medilaser around? "Doctor!" she admonished. She wished T'Pol was fully conscious, she'd be tearing the doctor to shreds with some pointed comment. Phlox grew testy. "This is my own personal equipment. It's not Starfleet. And the Verklaevs never said anything about medical tools." Hoshi had to shake her head. Talk about parsing the Verklaevs' intent.

Phlox used the medilaser on T'Pol's shoulder then made a makeshift bandage, using the remaining fabric to create a restraint that would keep it in place and a brace for her arm. He waited a few minutes, making sure the bleeding had stopped. "There", he finally said. "Fortunately it is a flesh wound, the lung has not been impacted." Turning to T'Pol he added "Can you enter a light healing trance? There is nothing else for us to do until I can go get help tomorrow." T'Pol nodded and Phlox helped her lay down on the knoll. Then he turned to Hoshi "Better rest and get some sleep, Ensign Sato, you'll be on watch as soon as the day breaks."

Hoshi sat beside T'Pol, leaning against the roots of the tree behind her, trying to make herself comfortable. The next thing she knew someone was shaking her awake. She blinked her eyes, wondering why the hand shaking her would not let her keep sleeping.

"Ensign Sato, Ensign Sato!" Phlox's voice was insistent, and it finally jarred Hoshi back from the world of dreams. She realized she was still sitting on the dry bank and T'Pol was lying unconscious at her side.

"The sun just came out and I need to go to the rendezvous point" Phlox whispered. "If I'm there right when the shuttle arrives, we should have time to come pick you up. That will be around 1240. If we can't pick you up for any reason, remain here. I will be on the next shuttle after that, at 2036, after nightfall. One way or another, I will be back."

"What about T'Pol?" Hoshi asked, worried about her lack of medical knowledge, especially where Vulcans were concerned.

"She'll be in a trance until I come back with the shuttle" Phlox reassured her. "Otherwise, she'll wake up sometime in the afternoon and feel much better. There is really nothing for you to do, just wait patiently. That goes for both of you."

"Take our scanners" Hoshi told him. Phlox paused. If he took the scanners, they would be pretty much helpless. "That's what we came to do" Hoshi reminded him when she saw his hesitation. She leaned over and picked up T'Pol's scanner from her belt, handed it wordlessly to Phlox along with hers.

"Keep an eye on T'Pol, I'll be back." Phlox lingered a few seconds, part of him worried about leaving the women behind. His medical instincts were pulling him to stay with his patient.

Perhaps he should let Hoshi go. But with T'Pol incapacitated he was now the senior officer on the team, and, like Archer, he was not the kind of senior officers to let less experienced junior officers take all the risks. He was also faster and stronger than Hoshi, though there was no doubt she would easily make the next shuttle in time. Phlox sighed. Sometimes there were no good options. He slid up the bank and through the reeds, and was gone.


	4. Snared

With Phlox gone, Hoshi felt the weight of being alone. The trees and reeds that had been a welcoming shelter turned slightly menacing, crowding her. The sounds around her grew somewhat louder in ways she found disturbing. She jumped when she heard some animal call downstream. The buzz of the insects became so many threatening messages. She watched one of them land on the blood soaked tunic of T'Pol's, forage for a couple of seconds, then fly off again. She had been ready to smash the bug, realized that copper-based blood was not its diet. She didn't have to worry about chasing flies away.

She forced herself to her feet in reaction to her rising anxiety, in an attempt to dominate it. Also, it would be better if she were ready to confront anything that came their way. She looked back at T'Pol, wishing her to be awake. If she were awake, she would be a source of strength, there would be two of them to manage the unknown. But her CO's eyes remained closed, and the Commander's chest kept rising in the slow and regular rhythm of sleep. To Hoshi she looked whiter than her usual greenish cast, but then considering the amount of blood weighing down her uniform, that was only to be expected.

Hoshi told herself she was being overly anxious. She forced herself to relax.

At that very moment two men jumped through the cover of the reeds, landing mid-stream. Hoshi's scream was cut off by another man jumping from the other side. They were dressed in skin-tight dark unipieces and the guns in their hands were imposing by their heft. They wore helmets with visors covering half their faces, preventing her from seeing who they were or the color of their mane. Their weapons were professional-grade, not like the handmade weapons of the Arumids they encountered the night before, but that did not mean anything.

One of the man raised what looked like a walkie talkie to his lips. "We got them." He turned to Hoshi, gun raised at her chest. "You are trespassing on the Greater Kingdom of the Nint. You are under arrest." So these were Nint after all.

Another of the men talked to the one who was obviously their leader "They don't look like Arumids" he pointed out.

"Look at their hair, they're obviously related" the other one replied. "It doesn't matter, they're both female. They need as many as we can get."

The third man guffawed. He and the second man took hold of Hoshi's arms, the leader's gun quelling any intonation of resistance.

Two more men came down the small embankment and grabbed T'Pol. The motion and the ensuing pain brought her out of her healing trance, head lolling as she tried to regain her bearings. One of the men holding her turned to the leader "This one's wounded."

"Take her anyway. They'll fix her up. Or not. But that's not for us to decide."

They were marched through the surrounding field to a small hovercraft poised at its edge. Hoshi's hand and feet were manacled and they half-carried, half-pushed her up a small ramp. The inside of the hovercraft was lined with two benches, with parallel chains coursing down the top and bottom of the vessel, held in place by eyelets bolted in floor and ceiling. The chains were freed from their support, passed through specially designed holes in both sets of manacles, and brought back through the eyelets. Soon T'Pol was dumped unceremoniously next to her and the process was repeated. T'Pol was still struggling to come out of her trance, half-slumped against Hoshi. The hovercraft's engine started and soon Hoshi felt the unmistakable sensation of the vessel taking air. They were flying away, she had no idea where, and no way to alert Phlox or anyone on the Enterprise. At least Enterprise would easily be able to isolate their alien biosigns. That was her only hope.

A half-globe on the inside of the craft started pulsating blue. Besides her, T'Pol slumped into unconsciousness. Hoshi looked at the globe, wondering why and what the apparatus may be. It looked like a box. Some kind of emitter, possibly. She could not see any sign that there was a receptive function to the box. The hovercraft banked suddenly, almost dropping them off the bench, and landed. A half-hour later the door opened and a squat Dalgort with a brown mane was shoved inside, then chained the same way they were. An Arumid female, based on the tapes Hoshi had reviewed on Enterprise.

Hoshi was thinking furiously, quickly coming to a conclusion she didn't like at all. Granted T'Pol and her were trespassers on Nint and that could possibly result in some form of jail time given how skittish the Verklaevs had been about their presence being uncovered. Though to be honest, she would have like it a bit better if the Verklaevs had been more forthright about the risks involved. But if she and T'Pol were on the hovercraft just because they were not Nints, and the Arumid was on the overcraft just because she was not a Nint, and the Arumids were disappearing… it all added to an uncomfortable thought. She tried to think if she knew of a community where aliens were systemically hounded and collared. A sense of embarrassment swept over her as she realized the only one she knew was Japan of the Tokugawa period, when foreigners were forcibly prevented from the mainland and were hoarded in seaside ghettos. Perhaps the Arumids had not disappeared at all and had just been relocated to another place on Nint. That had happened plenty of times in history. Yes, that must be it. She hoped.

The Arumind next to T'Pol looked up at the pulsating blue sphere and let out a keening wail. "My family will never find me" she cried "they will think I am dead." And she promptly lost consciousness. Hoshi's heart sank. She looked at the inside of the vessel with a new kind of dread. Where were they taking them?

The hovercraft banked again, and Hoshi realized that if she craned her neck a little she could see part of the unsheltered cockpit and more importantly, part of the viewport. Not enough to see the ground, but if they flew low enough she could catch some of the features of the landscape. Their Nint captors seemed oblivious to the prisoners in the belly of the hovercraft. Hoshi got up from the bench as far as the chain would let her and craned her neck again. That gave her a slightly better view of where the hovercraft was going. Not much but it was better than nothing.

One of the Nint guard was looking through what looked like a giant scanner. "I have three of them portside" he announced. The hovercraft banked in the direction he indicated, forcing Hoshi to sit. She could only see the sky. As the hovercraft came closer to the ground, she got up again and glimpsed the barren slopes of small desert mountains. She would recognize them if she saw them again. The guards in the cockpit got up once the hovercraft landed, obviously to get more prisoners. The leader glanced towards her as he stepped out of the cockpit, stopped in surprise "You are not asleep?"

Hoshi eyed him uncomprehendingly. Why should she be asleep? How could she be asleep? The leader pointed at the blue flashing orb. "Can you see the light?" he asked. Hoshi wondered if there was perhaps some trap involved. Of course, she could see the light. Why would she not? "It's a blue light" she replied, in a tone of complete disinterest.

"And it does not put you to sleep?" the leader was curious. All of a sudden, Hoshi understood why all the involuntary occupants of the hovercraft were unconscious. The orb was emitting something more than just the blue light she was seeing, and whatever else it was sending had an effect on some alien physiologies. She was intrigued to see it had the same effect on T'Pol. But it just didn't work on Humans.

The Nint leader shrugged. As long as the other prisoners were asleep, he was not exactly worried about the potential disruption from one single alien woman.

Two more Arumids came on board, both female. The hovercraft made another stop. Hoshi heard the report of guns but nobody was brought on board. Then they flew in what seemed to be a straight line for hours.

xx

The shuttle was flying low on the horizon, hugging the curves of the hills. Phlox's was looking outside the cockpit, his gaze riveted on the tall walls bordering the village. Only someone with an extensive knowledge of the city would have known of the narrow alley that snaked throughout the town before coming out of the village directly in the farmed fields. He suddenly tapped the pilot's shoulder. "There! It's there!"

They landed as close to the line of trees as they could and Phlox and the pilot came out at a run. They only had a handful of minutes. Phlox quickly found the spot where he had slipped in between the reeds, though he was not aware of making quite so much damage. There were broken stems and trampled grass all over. He looked up the stream, expecting to see Hoshi and T'Pol, but nobody was there. He called Hoshi's name, louder and louder, while he briskly walked a few yards upstream. That was the place where T'Pol had laid down. Phlox turned around, looking downstream and upstream, trying to figure out why they were not there anymore.

"Are you certain this is the place?" the pilot whispered. They had no time left, they had to rush back to the shuttle.

There was one way to be sure. Phlox took his scanner out, checked the area where he had treated T'Pol's shoulder wound. His scanner beeped and he turned back to the pilot. "T'Pol's blood. That's where they were." He straightened up, looking all around as they left.

That's where they had been. But where were they now?


	5. The Arrival

Finally, after hours of flying the hovercraft reduced its speed and height. Hoshi wasn't sure how fast they had flown but by all reckonings they were hundreds if not thousands of miles away from where they had been taken. The thought of so much distance anguished her.

How come they hadn't they found their biosigns yet? If she had been on Enterprise, she would have known to expand the sensor search and covered half the planet already. Who was replacing her at her post? Did she train them well enough that they would know how to run a search? Unless they had asked a junior crewman from the Science Department to cover her post. Did T'Pol teach search algorithms as part of her departmental training agenda? She calmed herself with the thought that there was always Jonathan, who would be very thorough about looking for them, and then, of course, Malcolm. Poor Malcolm, he must be going nuts by now. She imagined him coming to Nint with blazing guns, no, if it were Malcolm, it would be blazing torpedoes and canons. The thought made her feel better.

As the hovercraft came closer to the ground, she saw sheer cliffs, a black balsatic rock that seemed to have been chopped by some giant axe. She craned her neck further, pulling on the chains, the guards paid no attention to her, and she was able to see black cliffs on both sides, as if the hovercraft was flying into some deep canyon. Then the craft landed and the leader shut off the pulsating-blue orb. He saw Hoshi observe him, flashed a cold smile her way "That's a scrambler," he commented, "Nobody can tell there are people aboard. We don't need it anymore, the ones outside are much more powerful." All hopes of having their biosigns located were sucked out of her soul.

Next to her, T'Pol stirred, woke up and looked around. "Where are we, Ensign?" she asked.

"I don't know but we are far away from where we landed, possibly a thousand miles. We're in some kind of deep depression, at least a mile down from the surface. Black volcanic-looking rock."

T'Pol was silent next to her, seemingly inwardly focused. "Flat-topped?" she eventually asked.

"Yes, from what I could tell."

"We must be at the foot of the Barest'ig range, approximately two thousand three hundred and thirty-four miles to the West."

Hoshi stared silently at the Commander. This was far worse than she had thought.

xx

"I want you to find out where my officers are!" Archer was leaning over the conference room table, red-faced. A vein was pulsating on the upper corner of his forehead. Phlox was sitting by his side, radiating disapproval at the three Verklaevs in front of them. Reed's mouth was pursed in a thin line. It was his Hoshi these people were willing to give up on.

The Verklaev in the middle raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Captain, we never meant to say we would stop our search efforts. But you understand the situation is extremely sensitive with the Nints. We do not want to start a chain reaction. And your officers knew of the dangers involved."

He probably should not have said that last sentence. Archer was at his side before anyone could react, towering over him. "You asked for Starfleet's help in conducting a scientific inquiry in a discrete fashion. At no point did you tell any of us that they could disappear!"

The oldest Verklaev, on the right, spoke up. "We're sorry, Captain, but we didn't know ourselves that this would happen. At the worst, we were prepared for the Nint to express their displeasure and we had prepared a story to cover your people. We thought there might be negotiations involved, but we didn't expect that there would be nothing for us to negotiate over." Phlox glared at him. That was a poor choice of words.

The third Verklaev spoke in turn "We have, uh, sympathizers, on Nint and have already contacted them. They have their own networks. Hopefully, something will come up."

"Hopefully is not good enough!" Archer banged on the table, started pacing in the narrow space around the conference room table.

Phlox suddenly spoke up "It may be related." Archer whipped towards him, stopping in mid-motion. "What do you mean, related." Phlox was frowning. "We went to the Nint world to find out about a disappearing people of Arumids. And our people have disappeared too. Perhaps the two are related."

"But they are not Arumids!" the Verklaevs exclaimed as a group. "They're not even Dalgorts" the oldest added. It was evidently a source of distress and displeasure that two aliens could be lumped in with their own people. Reed's mouth twisted in contempt. These people were all so xenophobic. The Nints might be the worst of the bunch, but the others were not far behind.

Archer was looking at Phlox. "The only common point between the disappearance of the Arumids and that of our crewmen are the Nints. That's where we need to start. Get your report out to the Overarching Council as fast as you can so we can get some answers." He whirled on the Verklaevs "But I am not willing to sit and wait for months for the diplomatic process to work its way!"

He leaned over the older one, almost face to face with him, articulating very slowly. "Y.o.u h.a.v.e t.o f.i.n.d m.y o.f.f.i.c.e.r.s. Now!"

xx

The back wall of the shuttle opened and the women in the hovercraft were unchained one by one and brought out. The Arumids stood blinking in the bright light, awakening from whatever slumber the pulsating blue globe light had thrown them into. Hoshi looked around. They were in a square area surrounded on all sides by curtains of pulsating light from long projectors buried in the ground. Based on the effects of the pulsating orb in the hovercraft, she suspected one could not just safely walk through the light. Her theory was proven correct when the first Arumid to have been brought on board took off at a run and bounced back dazed and shocked when she reached the light. The guards were laughing openly. Hoshi heard one of them comment on the superior technology of the Nint and the backwardness of the Arumids.

She looked around and started cataloging her observations, knowing that T'Pol and she would soon be exchanging findings. Now that they were prisoners, the first order of the day was to plan and prepare an escape. Those were the directives that were imprinted in every Starfleet member from basic training on. Unless they received some signal that Starfleet knew where they were and was starting negotiations on their behalf. But that hope had pretty much been scrambled away.

The hovercraft had landed at the base of a deep depression, a V-shaped mild-wide canyon bordered by sheer cliffs of black basalt-looking rock. A mean-looking link chain fence extended from one cliff to the other, too tall to be scaled, if the spikes protruding a foot on each side did not deter one from trying. About a yard in front of the fence another curtain of pulsating lights shimmered for the width of the canyon. Apparently the fence was a back-up in case the lights failed. The same light curtain and fence combination was repeated twenty yards back from them, and in the space in-between was a large squat building that made the hackles rise on Hoshi's neck, she had no idea why.

On the open side of the canyon, a white road beckoned, dusty and silent. On the mountain side, she could make out rows upon rows of military barracks, four-story tall large buildings with very small square windows down the entire length of each floor. The barracks stretched all the way to the back of the canyon, where the cliffs closed up again. There must have been hundreds of them. Altogether, it was ingenious. All the Nint had had to do was close up the mouth of the canyon and they had themselves a built-in containment camp.

One of the light curtains went out and the group was herded into the short squat building. What happened next was like boot camp gone bad. It reminded Hoshi of videotapes she had seen of former centuries enlistment, the mandatory haircuts, the ill-fitting uniforms that didn't fit anyone, except this time heads were entirely shaved and the uniform was a short tunic that didn't allow much in the way modesty. Thankfully, since they could not use Starfleet uniforms, Phlox had injected the universal translators directly under their skin before they beamed down. She could understand everything that was said around her. She had lost sight of T'Pol early in the process, whisked away behind a couple of heavy doors with a strange sign on them. Hoshi hoped that was the infirmary.

The women were directed one by one into a round sterile room which stood in stark technological contrast to their rather manually-intensive handling. Hoshi felt the scan passing through her from head to foot, saw the medical imagery showing on the monitors suspended from the ceiling, at such speed that if she had not known it was her she could never have guessed whose body it was. A strange contraption enveloped her and she was held in place as blood and fluids were taken and sampled. And then she was told to move on, another couple of doors opened and she stepped in the courtyard where other women milled, her hand tentatively feeling her bald pate.

The Arumid women from her group were listless, not talking to each other, staring at the ground, one crying silently. She saw one of the women start talking to her and a guard swiftly came to separate them, truncheon at the ready. Obviously the women were not allowed to communicate to each other. After a couple of hours, the doors opened again and T'Pol walked out. Hoshi's first furious thought was that even bald the Vulcan was unbelievably beautiful. Some women had all the luck. She could see the outline of the heavy bandage around her shoulder. So the camp took care of the physical well-being of the inmates. It still didn't explain why they were in a camp.

Hoshi and T'Pol positioned themselves so that the guards could not tell they were actually talking and started exchanging information in hushed whispers.

"There are scrambling devices" T'Pol was looking up to the cliffs bordering the camp and the square dishes they could hardly make out at their top, that looked like telescopes. Hoshi's heart fell again, the slim hope that the guard had been lying reduced to dust. They could not count on a rescue based on biosign readings. It also explained why the Arumids seemed to have disappeared. They were there, but they weren't.

"There are no males" T'Pol went on "and all the women are in a narrow band of age groups." Hoshi looked around. She had noticed that a large number of the women seemed to be pregnant. T'Pol was right, there were no men, no children and no older women. She swallowed hard, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. What had happened to them? Did this mean only the women were captured? She didn't want to consider the alternative. Not yet.


	6. An Army

Hoshi and T'Pol spent the night in a holding cell along with the Arumid females. The temperature was pleasant for Hoshi, unpleasantly cool for T'Pol. In the morning, a phalanx of guards came to take the Arumids away but the two women remained behind.

"They must have finally figured we're not Arumid" Hoshi told T'Pol. The Vulcan was kneeling on the floor, seeming completely unperturbed.

"We do not have enough information to speculate," was all she said.

Hoshi bit her lip. If this was what how it was going to be every time she tried to make conversation, it was going to feel like a very long time before Starfleet sprung them out of there.

Suddenly the door opened and they were directed to step out by four guards. They were marched across a courtyard where female Arumids of all sizes and shapes were milling around, all with shaved heads and the same baggy tunic, though quite a few seemed to be pregnant, and found themselves back in the squat building.

Hoshi's heart was beating furiously, convinced they were soon going to be facing a firing squad and find out exactly what had happened to the men and older Arumid women. Instead, they were brought to a large room which had the feel of an office, except for the lack of a desk or furniture to speak of, just a large couch and low-lying stools. Two panels occupying a full two walls of the room would periodically come to life with streaming flashes of lights and were the only indication of the responsibilities of the occupant of the room, a tall Nint lounging on the couch. He lifted himself up on an elbow when the group marched in. The guards unceremoniously shoved the women on low lying stools at the center of the room. Hoshi saw T'Pol ready to push back and froze. This was so not a good idea and not what she would have expected of the Vulcan. A guard raised his gun as if he was going to strike T'Pol. They locked eyes for a few seconds before T'Pol seemed to come to terms with the illogic of fighting the inevitable and sat back on the stool.

The tall Nint had taken the entire scene in, and his eyes went appraisingly from Hoshi to T'Pol. He motioned for the guards to step back from the captives, sat up and passed a hand through his bi-color mane. "You are not Arumid."

' _Duh_ ' thought Hoshi. "No, we are not." T'Pol replied. "Where are we, and why are you holding us captive?"

The Nint director sighed, seemingly quite fatigued with the weight of his responsibilities. "I am the director of this camp. As to why we are holding you, it does not matter, you are not Nint and you were not supposed to be on Nint soil. We will treat you as if you were Arumid."

"Meaning?" For once Hoshi was glad of T'Pol's complete detachment in situations like these. She would never have dared question the man.

"We cannot afford to have our bloodline polluted by Arumids or whatever you are. This is an internment camp. We take care of pregnant Arumid females and make sure they receive the care necessary to complete their gestation. They all carry Nint babies." He emitted a small laugh "Of course, they were not pregnant when they arrived."

It took a while for the meaning of his words to filter through Hoshi's mind. She froze in stunned horror. Next to her, she felt T'Pol stiffen into a stone statue.

The Nint eyed them again. "Obviously, you are different. They shouldn't have taken you as breeders. But they did and you are here, and now you are my responsibility." A responsibility the camp director was obviously not enjoying.

"Breeders?!" T'Pol sounded indignant. Hoshi was starting to feel emotional.

"Females of age to conceive" the director replied, as if that wasn't obvious. He went on "The Nint reproductive sciences are second to none. In the process of making sure our racial lineage is never corrupted by outside influences, we have developed a number of innovative technologies. Actually, I would say that no other species is quite as advanced as we are. Recently, our scientists have developed a new process which allows us to use eggs from a woman of any species and produce pure Nint embryos and children."

"Are you talking of gene recombination?" T'Pol's scientific curiosity was aroused.

The director shook his head. "I wouldn't call it that. Some of the DNA is the same across populations. We leave the DNA that is an exact match to Nint in place and complete the rest with pure Nint DNA. The final product is indistinguishable from purebred individuals at a DNA level."

Hoshi was starting to feel queasy.

"If you are trying to eliminate the Arumids, why hold us also?" T'Pol logically followed.

The Nint director looked at her with a small smile "It's not all about the Arumids" he replied. He paused, seemed to listen to some inner voice, and then shrugged. "I don't mind telling you, you will never get out of the camp anyway. The beauty of our process is that the male children carry a genetic enhancement that means that their DNA will in turn overwrite any combinant DNA and they will only have pure Nint children, no matter who the mother is."

T'Pol reflected for a few seconds. "You are creating an army, one that has the ability to subvert the other species of Dalgort."

The director laughed in response.

"It takes time to assemble an army" T'Pol went on "How do you plan to keep this hidden from the other Dalgort races?" Hoshi wondered why T'Pol was focused on that one line of questioning and not the horror of what the Nints were doing to the Arumid women.

"It won't take us much time. We have hundreds of thousands of breeders across this camp and the other camps in the range. Almost the entire female population of Arumids. Well, the female population that can have children. Nints reach full maturity by age five and we will have an army a million strong very quickly" the director replied.

"A million strong?" T'Pol sounded dubitative

"We have a goal of 100% pregnancies. Each one of the breeders will produce a male offspring." The director paused "We actually can achieve it because we cull those who can't breed."

"Cull?"

The director waved at the air "You understand that we cannot release any of the breeders. Word would get out. We cannot let that happen before we are ready."

Hoshi was starting to have trouble breathing. Suddenly she felt T'Pol's hand around her wrist. The contact was enough to calm her down and allow her heart rate to drop. She looked at the Commander in gratitude, before focusing back on the camp director.

"What do you do with the children" T'Pol continued.

The director leaned towards T'Pol. "We have pure families that are waiting for the children and will raise them as Nint citizens."

"And what about the Arumid men and older women?" Hoshi couldn't help but be impressed by how scientific T'Pol's mind was. Where she was horrified beyond words at the insane plan the director was revealing, T'Pol was asking rational questions about how it all worked.

The director raised his hands. "We are not monsters, we don't automatically kill them." Hoshi reflected that as was often the case the truly monstrous did not see it in themselves. "Not unless they're going to be too much trouble. We have mines that need a lot of captive workforce. Once the women are gone, the Arumids go back to being uncivilized savages. We are actually helping them by keeping them at work." He chuckled "And helping ourselves too. Thank goodness our neighbors need raw materials. It's expensive to feed all these mouths." He turned to them as if struck by a new thought "That's actually another achievement of our geneticists. We can dissect anyone's genome and give them exactly the foods required in the amounts required by their unique metabolism. And nobody gains weight. You'll see." The cynicism was overbearing. Hoshi stared at the director with hateful contempt but he fortunately couldn't read Human expressions.

He leaned back in the couch as if explaining the workings of the plan had been too exhaustive a task. "You will be subject to the same rule as the Arumids. Every female has three insemination cycles to conceive. If that doesn't happen within those three cycles…" he waved at the air with a quick chop of his hand "Those who are of no use to the Greater Kingdom of Nint, the Nints have no use for."

He turned to Hoshi "My doctor tells me your physiology is similar enough to ours, I don't think you will have an issue." He called for a guard "Bring her back to her cell."

"Sir" the guard hesitated. The camp director looked up at him, seemed to realize what the issue was. "Ah yes, she hasn't been assigned a cell yet. Section 1, Building 5, number 304. It just got vacated." The two men shared a blood chilling grin.

One Hoshi was gone, the director turned to T'Pol.

"Your physiology is very different. I don't know what we can do. I wish they hadn't taken you as breeder. That would have been so much simpler." The camp director seemed to be overwhelmed by the weight of the problem she presented. T'Pol had already gathered the Nint was vain and lazy. She knew how she could turn that to her advantage. "I am a scientist. I can work with your doctor and help develop the appropriate methodology. You would get recognition for it." The camp director seemed taken aback, then took a couple of minutes to muse on the unexpected development. "I guess we could try that" he hazarded. "But no more than three months. We'll delay for three months while the two of you try to develop a process. I can't hold breeder slots open indefinitely." He was actually whining.

"You'll remain here, close to the medical rooms." T'Pol started to raise an objection, but the director quickly shut her down, calling another guard to take her to a cell in the squat building.


	7. The Lab

Phlox was working in the command center with a team of science personnel. Part of him was working and part of him was berating himself. He should not have left. He should have stayed with T'Pol and asked Hoshi to go to the shuttle, and she would be safe. He and Hoshi should have carried T'Pol to the shuttle, and they would all be safe. He should have stayed with them and at least they would all have disappeared together and he could have made sure T'Pol was healed and Hoshi was safe.

After the abrupt departure from Nint the week before, he had not been able to go back and do any kind of forensic analysis of the scene. All he had to go with was the broken stems and trampled grass around their entry point into the brook, which in hindsight he had decided did not come from them but from whatever had taken the women. Was there some unknown predator on the planet who came and took them away? If it had been a predator, there would have been some sign of struggle. Even if T'Pol was out, Hoshi was a black belt in Aikido and she would not just let herself be eaten. And there were no such predators on the planet, not according to the Verklaevs. Were they taken by the Arumids? Did they follow their tracks to the hiding place and come to finish the job they started, or just decide to grab the women and run. That was a possibility he could not discard. They might have come back with bigger weapons. But then, based on the general technology level of the Arumids, the women would still be in the general vicinity of the village and sensors had found no sign of them. Unless the Arumids who took them disappeared and the women with them. Which brought him back to the same question. Why were the Arumids disappearing?

Frowning, Phlox brought his attention back to the scanner readings. They had enough data to analyze for days on end, but unfortunately very little of it was of any use. How did a population disappear? So far, they had found nothing in the air, ground, water, animals, insects and everything else they went and so carefully collected that would explain the disappearance of the Arumids. The scans he had taken of the Arumids, when they first encountered them in the deserted town and then during the fight showed that they were normally healthy, without any medical issue or genetic abnormality that could account for their disappearance. If indeed they were disappearing. He could vouch for the fact that there were at least a dozen remaining Arumids within that town. Phlox stared at his screen without seeing it, thinking.

Perhaps they had just decided to migrate to other places. The Arumids, from what he understood, were a non-technological native species of Dalgorts, and lived according to the precepts of their own civilization. After all, all they had was the Verklaevs' opinion that the Arumids were disappearing. Considering how well the Verklaevs were informed about their neighbors, he didn't trust them to have realized that the Arumids had simply relocated. Perhaps they didn't like the Nints and were hiding from them. But hiding from plain sight was not the same as hiding from sensors. The Verklaevs – and the Nints – could have found a population that was simply hiding …so they disappeared all right.

But why would a non-technological species move about. The Arumids were not migrant that he knew of, their village showed sign of a long-lasting settlement. Unless they were forced to move? But then, they would have moved, not disappeared. And there would have to have been some sort of catastrophic event. What had the Arumid said again - 'the Nints happened.' Were the Nints the catastrophic event? The Nints happened and the Arumids disappeared. A strange coincidence in any case. And the Nints protesting they had no idea what was happening. Protesting too much, and showing zero interest in people that were part of their world, whether they liked it or not. Phlox shook his head. It was starting to sound like a tale as old as the world. The Nints were involved in the disappearance of the Arumids. They had to be. In a couple of days his report would be on its way to the Verklaevs. It would state that there was no natural phenomenon of any kind that could explain the disappearance of the Arumid, and would be written in such a way as to imply that the Nints were responsible.

And none of that would bring T'Pol and Hoshi back, not right away. If they could still be brought back. He could only hope.

Xx

T'Pol mentally reviewed what she knew of the effect of trioxidized gamendarium on Vulcan physiology. Once she had assured herself there would be no negative, or positive, effect, she carefully started building a research protocol around the potential for trioxidized gamendarium to maintain a hybrid pregnancy, tweaking one of the early results so that the compound would look on paper to be a promising new path.

T'Pol was concentrating on documenting the second phase of her research, lining up results that would in retrospect seem scientifically sound even when the fifth phase proved that, unfortunately, this approach too didn't work, when the wails of a woman cut across the lab and her concentration. She looked up but the doctor was nowhere to be found. She had noticed that her constant and low-key presence led him to be more and more often away from the lab or his offices. This was a fortuitous development. She approached the light curtain as closely as she could without being thrown back, stopping only when she felt the preliminary tingling of skin. Her access was still limited to the lab only. Perhaps, in order to free up the doctor's valuable time and allow him to focus on more lofty pursuits, she should suggest without seeming to, lest he become violent again, that she would be more efficient if she had access to the rest of the medical offices. This still would not give her access to the medical rooms, but it would be a step closer to putting the plan she had developed in motion.

The wails abruptly stopped. She knew enough of the procedure used by the Nints to surmise that the Arumid had been put under. While she was asleep, technicians would extract an ovule and proceed with the genetic engineering that allowed them to insert a pure Nint embryo back into the woman. The wails meant that the woman had been subjected to the procedure before. First timers didn't know what was in store for them and didn't protest. The others cried over the chance the procedure would be successful, or the despair it wouldn't be.

She heard the light curtain in her back switch off, then on. Even if she had not heard it, the smell of the Nint doctor was overpowering the sterile air. She quickly suppressed any visible reaction and turned around, waiting for him to step to the station where she worked. The lab was a pristine environment, with an array of carefully maintained and calibrated gene-splicing equipment the likes of which she had never seen, and Phlox would be drooling to get his hands on. She had little respect for the Nint doctor, whose research skills were almost non-existent, and whose only occupation was to apply the techniques developed by other brilliant geneticists and force women into artificial procreation. And who had a violent streak well hidden behind his mild appearance. In her eyes, he was nothing more than a butcher of a new order.

But like all unimaginative professionals, and not unlike the camp director, he possessed what was turning out to be the very useful trait of laziness. And once a somewhat incompetent and lazy technician was given someone to lord over, that technician would, like all petty chiefs across the galaxy, retain control of the more prestigious or self -asserting parts of the job and be happy to relegate the majority of the day-to-day work to its underling. Which is why, three weeks in, she was drafting the research protocols that would bring fame and glory to both doctor and camp director if they eventually led to a successful Vulcan pregnancy. While knowing full well that, even if by some inopportune miracle one of the tests that she designed to look promising before eventually failing would somehow turn out to be successful, the odds of her conceiving were exactly zero.

But she had a little over two months left to conduct the pretend scientific research, and she was going to leverage that time to an extent that the camp director could never have foreseen. While she developed the research protocol, while she carefully crafted compound testing regimens that she knew would be failures, she had also hacked the unprotected and fairly straightforward database of reproductive outcomes that was central to the camp, though figuring out its coding language had taken most of her waking time for the past three weeks, and she was now waiting for an opportunity to get access to the inmates' records.

Once she was able to play with the database she would find a way to tamper with Hoshi's record and her own, though she didn't think she could make them disappear altogether. She had already mentally coded a routine software that would invalidate most of the other inmates' records while remaining random enough that it would not be immediately detected. She could not protect everyone in the camp, only fools would take a sudden increase to almost 100% efficiency at face value.

On the other hand, the doctor and the camp director were fools and would not look twice into results that were too good to be true. And she only had two months left in which to act. The director may well decide to cull her as soon as the unproductive research period was over. She started considering all options.

She was brought back to the present when she realized the doctor had adjusted his position, bracing for a kick or a punch. "Yes, that will do." The Nint doctor handed her the lightpad back. "Proceed as planned."

"Yes, doctor." She had learned that the inmates were forbidden to know or pronounce the names of any of their Nint overseers. Which was just as well with her, she wouldn't honor them with their proper names. She realized she needed to meditate again. Ever since they had first entered the camp she had been experiencing an undercurrent of anger, at their captors, at the situation, at her mistreatment at the hands of the doctor, at the obscenity of what the Nint were doing, that required a lot of her control to suppress. Underlying the anger was worry for Hoshi, whom she hadn't seen since their encounter with the camp director. She had quickly figured out the topology of the camp and knew the exact distance to Hoshi's building and cell within Section 1. What was left was figure out some way to get there.

Unless…She looked back at the lightpad, seemingly reviewing the research steps she had herself carefully concocted while her mind was figuring out that perhaps there was a way to test out her knowledge of the coding language and get in contact with Hoshi at the same time. It would require accessing a communication sub-routine. If she could figure how to reach it through the research module…


	8. First Contact

"Jonathan" Admiral Duprovski was not happy "You presented your science report to the Verklaevs over three weeks ago. There is no point delaying Enterprise departure anymore. Your excuses are getting to be both flimsier and more transparent."

Archer smiled though his eyes could have sliced through the figure talking to him on the vidscreen. "I have not been making excuses. Everything I have asked for has been in order to foment a positive relationship with the Dalgorts."

Duprovski sighed. He should have known Archer was going to make this difficult. He looked at the padd in front of him "Let's see, where do I start" he said. "'Request to remain in orbit until the Verklaevs present the report to the Overarching Council in case there are additional questions.' You know that Starfleet has no interest in the inner political workings of Dalgort. We were asked to provide a report, we did. If your officers had come back aboard as planned, you would have turned around and left." He raised a hand when he saw Archer looking like he was going to speak "Please, spare me the explanations. Starfleet was accommodating enough to grant you that request, in light of circumstances, on an exceptional basis." He looked up from his padd "That means once in a blue moon, not every time, in case you were wondering" he threw at Archer. He went back to his padd "What do we have next… ah, yes… 'request to remain in orbit while the Overarching Council reviews the report, in case there are questions'. You might as well have repeated the first request." He leaned into the vidscreen "If there are questions, the Council and the Verklaevs know how to call Starfleet, don't they?" He pushed back into his chair again "But Starfleet granted the request. So now the Council has reviewed the request, and what do we have" Duprovski made a show of reading the padd "'Request to remain in orbit in case the findings are disputed by the Nints'." He glared at Jonathan through the vidscreen "We _know_ the Nints are going to dispute the report." He sighed" Starfleet has been very patient so far, but we only have a handful of NC-class starships flying around a huge galaxy and we can't have Enterprise parked around one planet because two of its officers disappeared during a mission. I'm sorry, Jonathan, but this is it, you have to let go. And don't bother presenting another request through channels, it will be automatically denied."

The two men glared at each other through the vidscreen. Archer's mouth was a thin line. He forced himself to speak levelly "Perhaps we can come back after our next mission."

Duprovski shook his head "I'm sorry to inform you that per Starfleet policies Commander T'Pol and Ensign Sato will be declared presumptively dead in another two weeks. Your next mission will last longer than that. Enterprise won't be coming back to Dalgort unless one of its people requests it and it is the closest ship around. I wouldn't count on coming back."

Archer briefly closed his eyes. He was well aware of Starfleet policy and didn't expect anything more – or less – from them. He had to ask the question that had been burning in his mind since the day T'Pol and Hoshi went missing. "Does Commander Tucker know?" he asked.

Duprovski looked blankly back at Archer "I don't see why Starfleet would inform a Commander of the disappearance of another Commander. Your new orders are on their way. Duprovski out" and he cut off the connection.

Archer sat looking at the dark screen. It took a few seconds for the full impact of what Duprovski had said to dawn on him. _The dissembling bastard_! Archer was filled with white hot anger for the bureaucrats at Starfleet. Not that he had ever much liked them, but this was taking it too far. So Starfleet was going to play both sides of that game, uh? Unofficially accept that Trip and T'Pol were a couple, and then when things went south, officially disclaim any knowledge and walk away. Of course, since they had never officially stamped the relationship, there was no trace in Starfleet records that it ever existed. And they were going to stick by that story. _The bastards_.

On the other hand, he couldn't deny part of him was relieved they were not going to tell Trip. If they did, he could well imagine the chief engineer temporarily dedicated to the warp seven project on the other side of the galaxy drop everything and find his way to Dalgort, to a diplomatic incident, and to a court martial, all at once. When Trip did find out in six months, when his mission was over, well… Archer could only hope the engineer would forgive him for not letting him know before. Granted, Trip's project was hush-hush and no communication was allowed with the rest of the galaxy, but they both would know that if Archer had truly wanted, he could have gotten a message across to the engineer. It seemed Starfleet was not the only coward here.

Archer had to remind himself that Starfleet's six-week 'presumed dead' policy was nothing else than a policy made up by deskbound bureaucrats who had no experience of space life. By the time Trip emerged from his secretive posting, T'Pol and Hoshi would be back on Enterprise. That's all there was to it.

He hoped.

Xx

The Nint doctor turn on his lightpad when he hear the ultrasonic buzz of an incoming message alert. He glared at the communication that opened up on the lightscreen. Building 5 in Section 1 needed a delivery of oxidize tridurite for an inmate complaining about cramps. How dare they actually send a request through channels. In the strict hierarchy of the camp, he was the doctor, above any of the Section overseers and didn't have to take orders from them. It would be unseemly for the doctor to deliver the medication himself. At least in his own eyes. He had been sitting stewing in silence for several minutes when he saw the alien walk by on the other side of the light curtain. He suddenly had an inspiration.

Shutting off the lightpad screen with an abrupt flick of the wrist, he called to the alien "You! Here!" It turned around and respectfully came to stand in sight, behind the light curtain. It had only taken a few corrections for it to learn how to behave with the camp leadership. "I have an errand for you to run." Let the section manager feel the full extent of the doctor's contempt when the meds he requested were delivered not even by a despised Arumid, but by a lower lifeform.

Xx

T'Pol blinked as she stepped outside, waiting by the first light gateway until her nictitating eyelids had retracted. It was the first time she had stepped outside since their arrival and the sun offered a welcome warmth. The Nint liked their surrounding temperature slightly warmer than Humans, which was a boon, but the absence of her thermal uniforms or unisuits meant that she was constantly cold. Fortunately, the doctor had insisted she be provided with a smock of sorts for lab work, more for show of his importance than for any useful purpose, she suspected, which was a welcome second layer whenever she worked. Only the nights were spent huddled under an overly thin blanket, trying to sleep or meditate in spite of the insistent distraction of the low ambient temperature. Actually, from that perspective only, it was a good thing that the doctor insisted she be in the lab at all times except during the obligatory rest period, when she was brought back to a holding cell in the squat building. A cell that only had cold water, of course.

As she approached the curtain of light demarcating Section 1, the pass in her smock pocket buzzed and the light went off, allowing her safe passage, to go back up again behind her. As the doctor had delegated the errand to her without any kind of directive, she had chosen to go during the lunch period. If there were questions, she planned to explain, since the section director had never sent the request for additional medication, that the meds were provided as part of a general distribution. Based on her observations from the last four weeks, she knew the doctor would never socialize with the section directors, which he deemed to be beneath him, and in any event should the topic ever come up, nobody would be arguing about who had sent what. Word would be that the meds had been delivered, and that would be the end of it.

T'Pol stepped into the food hall and waited unobtrusively. The smock marked her as someone of a different status than the other inmates and nobody came to ask her what she was doing there. The lunch signal had already been given and she could see a long line of Arumids snaking down the stairs and grabbing their rucksack from the delivery platform. The line of Arumids then snaked back upstairs so they would eat alone in their cells. Isolation was a big concern of the Nints, who seemed to be afraid out of any proportion that the Arumids would start talking to each other. Then again, isolation was an effective way of quelling any possible revolt or concerted action.

She knew that each rucksack would contain a thick and circular grain cake, a tasteless and coarse pack with the taste of sawdust, designed to deliver, on a customized basis, the exact amount of nutrients necessary to prevent death from starvation. She had read about tack biscuits in old Earth history, and imagined they had about the same gustatory appeal. Every time she painstakingly ate through hers, she would think about her and Archer being detained on Coridan and his direct order to eat to keep her strength up.

T'Pol saw Hoshi walking down the stairs among the Arumids. The ensign was looking down but must have felt something because she suddenly looked up. A grin spread across her face when she saw T'Pol, which she quickly tried to suppress. Her whole face was illuminated in spite of her pallor, emphasized by the dark circles under her eyes. She was drawn and tired-looking. T'Pol knew from her diplomatic training that Humans required interaction with others for optimal mental health and that early initiatives to isolate Human prisoners in order for them to establish a better connection with a deity had almost universally resulted in cases of mental illness. Fortunately, it was only four weeks since she had last seen Hoshi and she was pretty certain, knowing the ensign's personality, that she must have already found ways to talk to the Arumids around her, if only in the lunch line. But that was speculation.

She brought her attention back to Hoshi, who seemed to be nervously touching her ears and her face in random places. T'Pol responded in kind. It would have been overly dangerous for the two of them to try and talk. They were reduced to discrete hand signals that the other inmates would not recognize as such. Fortunately, Starfleet had anticipated the need for silent communication in times of danger and they were able to relay a fair amount of information. Unfortunately, hand signals were designed for minimalist communication, and there was no sign for "artificial insemination". T'Pol understood that Hoshi had gone out, but wasn't sure what that meant. Based on her own experience, it may simply have been out of the building where she was being held. When Hoshi passed by where T'Pol was standing, her face was devoid of any expression. Nobody saw the two women exchange a meaningful glance.

Hoshi had just walked past when T'Pol's head whipped around. The working of the muscles in the Vulcan's jaw was the only sign of her deep agitation. She had been too late. Probably by a couple of days only, but that didn't alter the end result. As crew members aboard Enterprise kept forgetting, Vulcan females had highly sensitive olfactory nerves. And Hoshi's pheromones had just told T'Pol she was pregnant. A fact that Hoshi didn't seem to know based on her body language and silent exchange with T'Pol.

T'Pol's brow furrowed. That was going to complicate things.


	9. Hope

"Come in."

The director entered the medical office and the doctor scrambled to his feet in a show of deference. T'Pol stopped what she was doing and took a step aside, waiting without looking at either Nint. The director seemed as fatigued and bored with his responsibilities as he had on that first night, six weeks ago already. His eyes ran over her as if she were part of the furniture.

He turned to the doctor "My dear colleague, I wanted to inform you personally that we're going to change the alien's cell. It is going to be residing in Section 1." T'Pol didn't as much as breathe, but her ears had perked up. That was the Section Hoshi was held in. "It won't change anything to the services it's performing for you,' the director quickly added.

The doctor shrugged. "I wouldn't adjust its schedule either way."

xx

True to his word, the doctor didn't adjust T'Pol's schedule to account for the two-mile distance to Section 1, and the guards didn't show up to bring her to her cell until the rest period rang. Unhappy at having to work into their rest period, they made her run the entire way. T'Pol realized six weeks of forced physical inactivity had not been kind to the conditioning she had carefully maintained while on board Enterprise. She hoped that Hoshi, freed from any specific role in the camp, had managed to stay in better shape. In the meantime, she needed to get fit again to maximize their chances of escape.

"Cell 304" one guard said to the other as they stepped into Building Five. That was Hoshi's cell. Why would the paranoid Nints who were so worried about prisoners speaking to each other, put them together in the same cell? Did something happen to Ensign Sato?

She noted with relief the form huddled on the cot when she walked in. So the ensign was still alive. Another cot had been set up that swallowed the remaining open space. T'Pol sat on it, knees almost butting in the cot Hoshi was lying on. "Ensign?" she asked of the form that was entirely covered by a slim blanket, head included.

"Go away" was the surprising answer.

T'Pol raised an eyebrow. "Even if I were inclined to leave you, Ensign, I see no possibility of egress out of this cell."

In a different time, Hoshi would have chuckled. It had been so long since she had heard the Commander's proper and logical communication. But the world had become a dark abyss from which there was no escape.

"Ensign?" T'Pol tried again. The sense of despondency coming from the huddled form was almost overpowering. She understood why the director had relocated her.

"How long have you known?" T'Pol asked.

"A week" came the strangled reply. Hoshi went on "I can't sleep, I can't eat, all I can think about is this… this thing! I want it out!" she started sobbing hysterically.

"Ensign." T'Pol needed to calm the ensign down. The emotions were battering her mental shields, and she was too exhausted to face the assault with equanimity. "Ensign!" she repeated forcefully. That brought the hysterics to an intermittent sniveling.

T'Pol went on "You are alive. We are both alive. Starfleet's orders in situation like these are very clear. We must devote all our efforts to surviving and escaping. The rest is incidental."

"Incidental!" Hoshi's reply was between a shriek and a sob "How can you call what they did to me incidental?!"

"Because it does not change the core of who you are" T'Pol coolly replied. "You are Ensign Hoshi Sato, the best communications officer in Starfleet, and your duty is to help us find a way to get out of this camp."

Hoshi raised her head slightly off the cot, still turned towards the wall. T'Pol had called her the best communications officer in Starfleet and she knew that whatever else happened, she couldn't let the Commander down. "How are we going to do that?" she sniffled.

"Let's sleep now, Ensign" she said "While I am gone tomorrow, I need you to prepare an oral report on everything that has taken place and the operations of Section 1 and this barrack." T'Pol had little illusions that this would be enough to keep Ensign Sato's mind away from the dark abyss she had been in. Hoshi would be alone for most of the day while T'Pol was slaving in the lab, and despair could be a handsome companion.

xx

T'Pol had been sharing a cell with Hoshi for three days now and still the young woman would not eat and hardly slept. As much as she seemed to come out of her desolation when T'Pol talked to her, she would succumb again while T'Pol was gone and T'Pol found herself having pretty much the same conversation over and over again at night. Which meant that she was not reaching the Ensign.

She sat cross-legged on her cot, giving up on meditation. Hoshi was still wrapped in her blanket like a nymph in a cocoon, head and face covered, turned towards the wall, unmoving. "Ensign, do you remember our encounter with the Xyrillian?" T'Pol asked. She didn't receive a response, which was among the expected outcomes. "Do you remember what happened to Commander Tucker?"

Hoshi's eyes opened under the blanket as she tried to remember. They had been on the bridge, Trip was wearing some kind of non-regulation shirt, and then he had showed something to the Klingons and they had laughed. Ah, yes, he had been pregnant. She could see what T'Pol was trying to do.

"It's not the same," she scoffed.

"You are correct, Ensign, it is not the same," T'Pol agreed. "Commander Tucker is a male and his body was not prepared or meant for pregnancy. He grew nipples on his wrist and because he was devoid of an organic pouch the embryo became implanted close to his heart."

 _Gosh, that was even worse_ thought Hoshi.

"It _was_ however the same," T'Pol was going on, "in that he was the victim of a pregnancy that was imposed on him by an alien species, one in which his DNA contribution was essentially non-existent."

Hoshi raised herself on an elbow and turned to look at T'Pol. She had never really thought of it, but poor Trip. Not only did he have to deal with a total and utter invasion of his body, but he was a man and his body was not even made to go through pregnancy. And yet, she remembered Trip acting perfectly normally the whole time, as if the entire thing was not a big deal, even if perhaps he had become a little emotional at times. She could tell that T'Pol was trying to present Trip's attitude as a model of behavior, but she was not interested. She turned back towards the wall.

" I- don't- want- this- thing- in- me-" she enunciated clearly and slowly, just in case the Vulcan didn't get it.

"How is it different from having a biomechanical implant?"

"Because it is not a neutral implant. It's alive, it's feeding off me, and it's growing!" Hoshi's voice rose into a near-shout. Couldn't T'Pol get that was the stuff of nightmares. Did Vulcans even have nightmares? Probably not. Just her luck, having to explain things to someone who had no common frame of reference.

"And then when it's finished growing it will come out and you'll be rid of it." T'Pol was making it sound so simple. Like this was just a hiccup in the adventure of life.

She was just not getting the sheer horror this represented for Hoshi. "This thing is taking my body over!"

"It is taking part of your body over on a temporary basis." Was the calm and collected reply.

"Trip was able to get rid of it" Hoshi countered. And there lay the difference.

"Indeed he was" T'Pol concurred "but initially he didn't think he would and that made no difference in terms of how he adapted to the situation."

"I'm not Trip" Hoshi said with finality, hoping to bring the discussion to an end. She should have known not to debate a Vulcan.

"You are not Trip but you are, like him, a Starfleet officer, and as such you have the ability to choose to behave honorably no matter the circumstances."

Hoshi rolled her eyes. She couldn't believe T'Pol was going to make a 'good of the many outweigh the good of the one' argument out of this mess. "And you're going to tell me how the good of the many outweighs the good of the one when I'm the one who was forced to be pregnant?" she was being sarcastic and petulant. If they had been on Enterprise her behavior was pushing the envelope of insubordinate. A moot point.

"If you lose the pregnancy, Ensign, you will be culled because it is doubtful you will get pregnant again within the required timeframes. If you are not there, my chances of escape will be reduced and I will most probably be killed as well. If we both disappear, there is a chance Lieutenant Reed and Commander Tucker will behave rashly, with negative consequences for themselves and Enterprise, Dr. Phlox may never recover from his sense of guilt and may retire from Starfleet with adverse consequences for the crew, and Captain Archer may become compromised in his ability to make rational decisions in circumstances that are similar to the ones we are in."

 _Is she for real_? Hoshi thought. Did she really think that would happen? If she lost the pregnancy and was culled as a result, nobody would care. The whole world would keep doing whatever it was doing and she would become a comma on some history book. They all would.

Except she didn't really want to drag the Vulcan down the hole with her. She could imagine the hurt Trip would feel if anything happened to T'Pol. He would probably do something rash and stupid. And if anything happened to Trip, his best friend's heart would break. And Malcolm's heart would already be broken if she died. She could picture him, despondent by her grave, his grave. She couldn't do that to Malcolm.

Hoshi sat up, letting the blanket fall off her face and head for the first time since T'Pol had been assigned to her cell. "It's like having the Xinthi parasites in my head, instead it's in my body. If I can think about it that way, it's ok, well not really but kind of" she told T'Pol. She could never be quite as carefree as Trip about it, but she wasn't going to let some cluster of alien cells bring her down. "But then all I can remember is that there is this alien thing in me and I didn't want it and I don't want it, and I get overwhelmed."

T'Pol nodded. "Perhaps I can help you with compartmentalization techniques, so that you do not get overwhelmed."

Hoshi nodded, suppressing a shuddering sob. That's what she needed, get this into its proper mental box so it would finally leave her alone. She moved her legs so T'Pol could come and sit by her side on the cot.

"I am so done with alien parasites" she commented.


	10. A Sighting

Hoshi had a hidden talent for contraband. Now that T'Pol and her were sharing a cell and could finally devote all their energies to figuring out a way to escape the camp, she could gloriously manifest the full breadth of her talent. It was something she had instinctively known since she was a kid, that whenever there was a society living in communal togetherness, there was also another hidden society that lived right alongside in the shadows of the first one. It might be more or less rudimentary, it might be more or less successful, but there it was, in the cash economy wrapped around the successful economies of the twenty-first century, in the poker game played in the interstices of Starfleet's regulated training regimen, it was like Japanese knotwood pushing its way through the cracks of a sidewalk, it was always there.

The camp was no different, if pickings were slim and far between. Since communication between the women was forbidden, a cottage industry of sorts had sprung and there was a massive flow of communication running unbidden around the camp, outside of the guards' sight or earring. Women were prevented to talk, so they talked all the time, right under the unseeing eyes of their overseers. It could be a few words behind a hand hiding a cough, or dropped like jewels while bending to the ground, a hand stroking an arm, a glance of pointing eyes, but communication would not stop. And Hoshi had a well-known talent for communication, which went along with an insatiable curiosity for languages of all and any kind.

That was an explosive combination. In the first few weeks she and T'Pol were separated, Hoshi had learned Arumid well enough that she could repeat the modulated thrills of some consonants with barely an accent. She had also talked to pretty much every last inmate in Section 1, and if light barriers had not separated the Sections from each other, she would probably be on her way to making contact with the entire camp. One to three words at a time, she had charmed the other women, thrilled that someone would be learning their despised language, even if that someone was an alien, their common bounds made them friends and sisters, once they were freed, if they were ever freed, it would be another story.

And where there was communication, there was information, and as a side benefit, there was contraband. Not that it amounted to much, mostly food foraged from hidden wilds or the occasional dropped and lost item that may fall from a guard's pockets, but in the context of the camp, those were precious jewels.

Which was how Hoshi and T'Pol had managed to set up the cots above each other, in a rudimentary balanced framework made of spit and wire, and free up half of their cell. The regained space meant that Hoshi could pace and T'Pol could meditate and both could exercise, something T'Pol was adamant about.

It had been two weeks since T'Pol had joined her in her cell and Hoshi hoped they would let her stay. Her hold over the horror of her pregnancy was tenuous and it was not something she let her mind dwell on for more than a few seconds, wary of reawakening the still fresh wound. So far, there was no sign they would separate them again. It may just be administrative inertia, it was always easier to let things be than to change them. Or perhaps they knew that if they took T'Pol away, she'd go right back to being suicidal. Or perhaps it was easier for them to lump the two aliens together and focus on the Arumids. Or perhaps T'Pol was there as a chaperon or babysitter. Hoshi smiled inwardly. Like they would have any idea how close that was to the truth, T'Pol being her superior officer and all _._

But that was not her focus this morning. Hoshi breathlessly stepped in their cell, holding both their rucksacks. Though neither would mention it, she had noticed the Vulcan was more often than not exhausted, physically kept on her feet non-stop by a sadistic doctor who was delegating more and more of his work to her while making her run research on hybrid procreation, which required a tremendous amount of mental energy in order to maintain the appearance of scientific progress in the midst of made up sets of results. There were obvious advantages to the state of affairs, but it came at a price. So on the few times that T'Pol was there during food distribution Hoshi would leave the Vulcan to meditate alone in their cell while she went down to the food line, talking to the women before and after her on the staircase, gathering any information making its way up or down the line, exchanging news, and sometimes making trades since her pregnancy status gave her access to additional food. Though she was not expecting that advantage to last very long as it seemed more and more women were being registered as pregnant every day.

"Word has gone out!" she exclaimed as she rushed in the cell.

T'Pol snapped out of her meditative state, eyeing Hoshi dubiously and concealing her irritation at the interruption, and at herself for not having heard Hoshi coming back up the stairs.

"Someone on the outside knows we're here."

In response, T'Pol simply raised an eyebrow. There was much that the ensign needed to explain.

xx

"Archer here" Archer hit the videoscreen, allowing the connection with Starfleet to come through. He wished it had been Hoshi letting him know there was a message from Admiral Duprovski, but that was a painful thought.

"Captain Archer," Admiral Duprovsky looked exactly the way he had – what was it – three weeks ago. Archer wondered acidly if the Admiral had reached out to let him know T'Pol and Hoshi were now declared dead. "We have received a communication from the Verklaevs. They are still confirming details but there is a remote possibility that your officers are alive on Dolgart."

"We are being re-routed?!" Archer shot back, ready to jump out of his chair. Admiral Duprovsky sighed. "May I remind you, Jonathan, that we still need Enterprise to finish its current mission, and besides, you couldn't be further away from Dolgart."

 _Thanks to whom_ , thought Archer, but he wisely refrained from saying it out loud. "So what's next?" Archer was doing everything he could to remain outwardly calm and not give the Admiral a piece of his mind. It didn't seem like a good idea to antagonize Duprovsky at this time.

"The Verklaevs are confirming the presence of two aliens in a remote area of Nint," Duprovsky went on "Once they do, they will start negotiating with the Nint through the Overarching Council, as part of the investigation already taking place based on the report you delivered. They are considering the officers to be hostages." Duprovsky stopped his rather official declaration, looked earnestly at Archer "Jonathan, I don't think I need to impress on you that this is great news. We believe the Verklaevs would not have reached out to Starfleet unless they were more certain than not that the people they located are Commander T'Pol and Ensign Sato. Starfleet has taken them off the deceased list until further notice. I will keep you abreast of the negotiations. Admiral Duprovsky out."

Archer looked in silence at the darkened screen. He needed to talk to Phlox.

x

Archer walked in Sickbay for the first time in weeks, and realized he had been unconsciously avoiding Dr. Phlox. Hearing Phlox's footsteps in in his back, he turned to talk to him. And froze in his tracks. The doctor had easily lost twenty pounds, his tunic hanging on his frame as if it were at least a size too large, which in all probability it was. Archer realized that he had in front of him the image of a man consumed by guilt. And he felt horrendously guilty that he had not noticed. And to be honest, probably contributed to it by his, he now realized obvious, avoidance of Sickbay, as if he held Dr. Phlox responsible for the disappearance of T'Pol and Hoshi. And he also realized that if he had had an XO, she would have let him know about the private grief that was eating away, literally, at their medical officer. Which brought him back to thinking about T'Pol, again another thought better avoided.

"Doctor, I'm sorry." Archer started, wanting to apologize for his behavior, for being an unthinking ass, for everything that had happened, for even the slightest hint he had held Phlox responsible.

He saw the doctor blanch and realized how it must look to Phlox, the captain coming to Sickbay after studiously avoiding it for weeks, to start with words reserved for the sharing of bad news. He quickly corrected "I'm sorry for not realizing earlier how much this was hurting you. Word is that T'Pol and Hoshi are alive."

He could not remember seeing someone's face light up quite so fast. And he took pleasure in the fact that for once he had something to do with it.


	11. Diplomacy

Hopeful that, now that word about their presence had gotten out, Starfleet would eventually come to rescue them, the Commander's and the Ensign's thoughts turned to escape plans. For if one's faith in the dedication and resourcefulness of Starfleet, and especially of a certain of its captains, was boundless, it was only logical to pursue independent paths to freedom and not rely solely on the _deus ex machina_ intervention of Starfleet, which, though this was never openly voiced, was after all mostly made up of Humans.

Based on Hoshi's extensive description of the workings of Section 1 and her own ongoing forays into various sub-routines of the central processing unit that supported the main database, T'Pol had started lining up certain weaknesses in the orderly functioning of the camp, weaknesses which the two women were hopeful to eventually translate into their exit from the camp. But beyond getting out, which should prove a fairly accessible task with a slight reprogramming of any lightpass like the one T'Pol could get her hands on via her access to the squat building that was the center of the camp administration, they had to think about ways to remain hidden from sight or sensors afterwards, and identify a somewhat safe area to which they could retreat and wait for Enterprise or Starfleet. It had taken minimal additional coding for T'Pol to install an additional sub-routine in the main processing unit and access a series of topographical maps of the Barest'ig range and the region the camp was located in, revealing several large areas with dampening natural effects.

All that was left to do was to choose the method of egress that would most swiftly and painlessly get them to one of those areas.

xx

The Verklaev representative to the Overarching Council stared at her Nint counterpart, whose bi-color mane was pretty much standing on end. It was becoming obvious that any direct approach through the Council would be met with denial and stonewalling. The investigation had already been underway for four weeks, thanks to the report provided by Starfleet and after the expected, though minimal, delay necessary for the other member races to read the report and for the Nints' to posture, express outrage, and finally bow to the inevitable, though gracelessly and with much dragging of feet.

The delay in the start of the investigation due to their antics would make no difference in the end. The Verklaevs had known for quite a while that the Nints were behind the disappearance of the Arumids and that the Arumids had been gathered into locations that were protected from all sensor readings, and Starfleet's intervention and report had been but a political tool to allow the Council to intervene. DNA analysis had shown that, as backwards as they were, the Arumids could be the ancestor race to all Dalgorts and the Verklaevs felt a moral imperative to protect them, even if they would never accede to their presence on Verklaev soil.

It was a completely fortuitous turn of events that had revealed the presence of two aliens in the hands of the Nints. It seemed another universal experience that all dictatorial powers tended to forget was that those they used to carry out their schemes had their own lives, which lives may encompass other lives, which may encompass yet other lives, so that information eventually traveled from close circle to close circle until it reached someone whose job it was to remain close, someone who may happen to be closely allied with the Verklaevs, or on their payroll. This being third-, fourth- or fifth-hand information, the Verklaevs could only assume that the aliens being mentioned must be the two Starfleet officers that had disappeared the month before. In a universally known and experienced 'worst-case scenario', aka Murphy's Law, the Enterprise had left orbit a few days before the discovery, leaving the Verklaevs alone to try and figure how they would approach the Nints about it.

They had done so ever so cautiously, through hallways chance encounters that were just specific enough to let the Nints know that they were aware a couple of aliens were possibly interned in one of the camps at the foot of the Barest'ig range, and of the potential need, given the importance of Star Fleet to Dalgort's overall interests, to consider a possible release of these aliens, in exchange, for, let's say, compensation large enough that all those involved in the decision would know riches beyond the dreams of many.

By the time it became clear an indirect approach was not going to work, the investigation was already well under way, so the Verklaevs had raised the issue of the presence of Starfleet aliens directly through the Council. And looking at her Nint counterpart, the Verklaev representative was presently thinking this approach was not working either. The Nint representative had just eloquently told the Overarching Council that there were no camps held by the Nints, and that, even if there were such camps, those camps did not hold any aliens, being, as they were, entirely devoted to the well-being and preservation of the Arumid race, and, incidentally, they still did not understand why there even was an investigation into the question of the Arumids, their being a backwards race who had probably had enough of civilization and decided to revert to more nomadic ways, but let the investigation prove them wrong.

Unbeknownst to the Verklaevs, while the Nint representative to the Overarching Council was stonewalling, a special governmental committee had been set up on the Greater Kingdom of Nint with the express intent to deal with the issue of the camps before the investigators could discover their existence, but especially their purpose, and secondarily to decide the issue of the two alien females, who should never have been brought to a breeder camp in the first place, and in hindsight should have suffered from some fatal accident at the time of their arrest. That initial mistake had been compounded several times over, though to be fair to the camp director, the females had already been registered as breeding stock before they were handed off to him and he really had had no choice but to put his best efforts towards achieving objectives or he would have had to file extensive lightwork explaining why he had deliberately forsaken two breeding slots. But the moment the Verklaevs first approached the Nints in the hallways talking about compensation, and even more so now that the possibility of gain had been revealed to the entire Council, too many interests had become aligned with the aliens' survival for them to disappear quietly as they should have.

"Honorable Representative, Gentlebeings" the Verklaev representative spoke loudly so nobody on the Council could later make claims of an unholy alliance "as delegates of the Council to the offworld, the Verklaevs know that Starfleet is willing to negotiate in order to get the aliens back. May we remind the Honorable Representative and the other members of the Council that Starfleet is very powerful and has large resources available to it. Perhaps before we debate further as to the aliens, the Overarching Council would be amenable to private meetings between the Verklaev and the Nint representatives as to what Starfleet's anticipated response for the greater good of all of Dalgort would be if they happened to locate the aliens... Or didn't."

She let the carrot/stick meaning filter through the Overarching Council, sighing inwardly. There were parts of her job that she truly despised. But now that the other races knew of a potential general windfall, or general hardship, the Nints would be hard-pressed to hand over the aliens. The negotiations could start in earnest.

She wouldlet Starfleet know.

xx

Unaware that their fate was being reviewed by two independent bodies, one of them illustrious, Hoshi excitedly burst into their cell.

"Everyone received an extra serving of food today." Hoshi handed T'Pol her rucksack. "Word is that it is because the camp achieved its pregnancy numbers this month" she added.

"Did they now?" T'Pol replied.

Hoshi was looking at the far wall of the cell, frowning "It's kind of funny because when I look at our Section there doesn't seem to be many more pregnant women around. Perhaps it's the other Sections."

T'Pol was looking at the rucksack she was balancing on her knees, examining the various items as if they were vaguely repulsive lab specimens. She looked over at Hoshi. "A month ago, the camp doctor saw fit to have me help maintain the database of reproductive outcomes" she calmly said, going back to her food as this was the most natural statement in the world. She didn't add that unbeknownst to the doctor she had already hacked into the database and had been modifying the results for weeks already.

Hoshi stared back at her nonplussed, then her eyes widened as the implication of what T'Pol had just said slowly dawned on her "He what?!"

T'Pol raised an eyebrow in response.

Suddenly Hoshi started laughing, hiding her mouth with her hand. Talk about putting the fox in charge of the coop. A part of her was worried that there would be hell to pay. She hoped the Nints never found out. But it was just too funny. Poor people, trusting T'Pol with their database.

"He has, hasn't he?" was all she said, thinking of Malcolm. He would undoubtedly deem that this was a proper English response. God, how she missed him.

She kept chuckling throughout her meal, unaware of the dark clouds massing on the horizon.


	12. The Reckoning

There was hell to pay.

T'Pol walked into the lab offices to start her shift and stopped. The director of the camp was there, with two guards, and the doctor was nowhere to be seen. She fell into an easy stance, hands behind her back, dropping any pretense of subservience. The guards walked to the door, arms at the ready, and the camp director slowly circled the office as if he were keenly interested in the medical equipment lying all around. He stopped in front of her, picking up a tube-shaped oscilloscanner from the counter.

"Well, well, well" he said, tapping the heavy scanner in his hand, "we've had an interesting incident in Section 6." He started pacing right and left a couple of steps as he talked "A pregnant breeder complaining about cramps. The section director couldn't find out anything wrong with her so he sent her to the doctor for further evaluation and a scan. Wouldn't you know it?" he stopped and turned to T'Pol "The scan revealed she was not pregnant. Hysterical pregnancy or something, the doctor said." T'Pol looked at him expressionlessly.

"But in the database, she was registered as pregnant" the director went on, starting his pacing again, as if there was a puzzle he was trying to elucidate. "We couldn't understand how that could be. If the database says she's pregnant, she must be pregnant, right? So we did more research, started checking records at random." The director let his voice trail. "Which were the responsibility of the doctor, not of an inmate" the director went on. "Because he should know that an alien is too stupid to keep the records straight. But then, when you find that not one or two but a large majority of the records have false information, you have to start thinking that perhaps it was done on purpose." He looked at T'Pol who who seemed quite bored by the whole exposé. She was actually computing the odds of the current development, wondering if perhaps she had been overly optimistic in her estimation that she could corrupt the entire Nint database without being discovered before she either was culled or escaped. She found that the odds were in the order of 0.0273% and would have been discarded as outliers. There was nothing she could have done differently.

"Have you ever heard of the Sivecxal test?" the camp director abruptly asked.

Bringing her attention back to the matter at hand, T'Pol stared at him impassively "I am not familiar with the test."

"You see", the director was playing with the oscilloscanner, looking down its length as if to assess the straightness of the casing, "before we had advanced technology, there was an easy way to tell if someone was pregnant. All one had to do was inject the urine of the pregnant female into a Sivecxal. If the Sivecxal died, the woman was pregnant."

T'Pol raised an eye brow in response, seemingly completely detached from the issue.

"See this" the director held up a vial at eye level. "This is the urine of one of our recently pregnant inmates. At least according to the records you have been helping the doctor with." The director made a show of producing a needle, inserting it in the vial, and withdrawing a syringe-full of liquid. "So", the director went on, "If I inject a Sivecxal with the urine, the Sivecxal should die. I happen to have a couple of Sivecxals with me. Isn't that handy?" He produced a plastic container holding a couple of lizard-like animals which T'Pol surmised must be Sivecxal.

"Here, I am injecting the urine of a pregnant female into the Sivecxal. Now let's see what happens." The director grabbed one of the lizards and injected it with the urine. Then he waited. After five minutes he turned to T'Pol. "Is the Sivecxal dead?"

She didn't answer. The director raised his voice "Is the Sivecxal dead?!" T'Pol just looked at him. Without warning the director hit her full force in the stomach with the scanner. T'Pol exhaled with a gasp and fell to her knees. "Is the Sivecxal dead?!" the director was screaming in her ear. She winced slightly at the sound, then eyed him levelly "I don't believe it is."

"Exactly!" the director was flushed, his bi-color mane standing on end. "The Sivecxal is not dead. Because that inmate was not pregnant." He grabbed her by the front of her tunic, lifting her to look at him as he bellowed in her face "Like every other inmate you have been reporting as pregnant for the past month!" T'Pol carefully kept her eyebrows in place. So it looked like the Nints had not figured out she had been playing havoc with the database for a full month before the doctor even asked her to maintain it. Of course, they could not in their wildest dreams imagine that an alien, a lower lifeform in their eyes, could do sophisticated programming work and hack into their system. It was a small but rewarding comfort.

The director's face was distorted with fury. "The doctor is going to pay for this, but you are going to pay more" he snarled at her. He threw her at the guards "Bring it to the correction room, I'll take care of it personally."

xx

The camp director stood, looking at the alien, a heavy truncheon in hand. Its arms were extended over its head, manacled to a chain hanging from the ceiling, and it was standing looking at him. The camp director took out the top part of his uniform and folded it neatly, then handed it to his aide. "You can leave now" he indicated the door with his chin. The aide and the guards scurried out. The director's foul mood was something to be avoided at all costs.

T'Pol seemed to stare at the Nint while in fact she was swiftly preparing for what lay ahead, going through mental disciplines made to separate her mind from her physical body to the extent possible, and block the pain that was to come. Still, the first blow of the truncheon took her breath away and she felt the distant scream of torn and crushed muscle fibers. The blows kept coming, furiously fast, the pain accumulating behind the shields until it threatened to burst through, then finally burst through. And still the blows didn't stop. She realized that she might die if this didn't stop. A wave of fury broke through her at the thought and she heard herself roar at the camp director. The blows intensified in response. A welcome darkness fell and the world ceased to exist.

The camp director stopped, breathing heavily. His body shirt was dripping sweat, his mane was sending a constant stream of sweat flowing down his back. He was exhausted from the physical exertion. He threw his truncheon in a corner of the room, looking at the inert body dangling from the chains.

Part of him started worrying that perhaps he had killed the alien. He had been told several weeks before to hold the aliens together, along with very clear directions that nothing was to happen to them. There were apparently some internal discussions at the highest levels about what to do with them. It wouldn't bode well for his career if he had to report that one of them had died. Besides which they were still being accounted for as breeders, usual bureaucratic contradiction, and he didn't want to get in trouble for depleting the breeding stock. He would have to fill lengthy lightwork about what happened and it could mean an administrative reprimand. He already had enough trouble ahead of him having to explain how the numbers reported by the camp didn't match the actual pregnancies.

He walked to the wall and released the chains. The alien fell in a heap on the floor. He felt for a pulse, but there was none. Remembering that it was an alien, he pulled out his lightpass from his belt and held the metallic surface close to its nose. It took longer than he would have felt comfortable with but he finally saw the faint outline of mist. Expelling a breath he didn't know he was holding, he walked to the door. His aide was standing guard outside, obviously worried. He didn't need to be, the director had released all his anger on the inmate. "Bring it back to its cell" he said before he left for a change of clothing, glad to have avoided any hint of lightwork, at least temporarily.

xx

Somewhere in the depths of a secret military installation on an even more secret asteroid, a blond-haired chief engineer froze and frowned, looking up at the ceiling of the cavernous hangar in which various starship engines were in diverse stages of configuration and testing, wondering what had called his attention. Something didn't feel right. The technician next to him handed him the result of the latest batch of testing, interrupting his train of thought, and the blond-haired engineer bent over the padd, examining the test results.

His thoughts briefly went back to Enterprise, out somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, so far away he only had the most tenuous shadow of a link with his mate. It was the barest sensation, so ephemeral as to be almost not there. He could see all of them in his mind's eye, his friends and family, on the bridge, including Phlox, enjoying an easy camaraderie and familiar banter while the starship cut through the silent velvet of space. The thought made him smile. He turned back to reviewing the test results, satisfied that all was well in the universe.


	13. A New Resolve

Hoshi pressed on the piece of fabric slowly dripping water in T'Pol's mouth. She noted with relief the reflexive swallowing. She went through the process another two or three times, then fearful of providing too much water to a Vulcan put the fabric away and took the rag that she had traded four grain cakes for. That one was used to gently clean the blood seeping through all the areas where swelling intercrossed swelling until the skin could no longer stretch far enough and just split randomly to relieve the pressure.

T'Pol had been unconscious since they brought her back. Hoshi couldn't tell if that was a healing trance or a coma. But it had been three days already and while she had no knowledge of how these things worked, logically, she smirked at the word, if someone was in a coma in sickbay they would not be left without water or food. She didn't know how healing trances worked but didn't think it could hurt to provide food and water. She seemed to have figured the water part, now she had to think about the food.

At least this gave her something to think about. Now that her cellmate was silenced Hoshi found herself missing the quiet, even if taciturn, presence. She had come to rely on the emotional support she was getting from the Vulcan. She chuckled to herself – emotional support from a Vulcan. If she told any other crewman on Enterprise, they would consider having her committed. But it was the Commander's alien pragmatism that had helped channel her out of the deep blue funk she had been in and there was the ever present worry in her mind that she would go back to that dark place if she didn't have the Vulcan's seeming detachment as a guide.

Seeming detachment indeed. Or T'Pol would never have bothered ruining the database results for the Nints. Starfleet was clear that their officers' had to ensure their own survival. Nowhere did it say 'and take care of others in the same predicament'. T'Pol had gone above and beyond and part of Hoshi wondered if perhaps it was because of her own pregnancy. She had a sudden insight that T'Pol was in fact very much like Archer, ready to step in to defend the oppressed and do what was right, consequences be damned. Possibly that was what attracted her to the captain and had made her stay with Enterprise. Initially.

In the meantime, their careful escape plans had gone up in smoke. Not that Hoshi could blame the Commander. If roles had been reversed, she also would have seized on every opportunity to mess up with the Nints. Now that escape was a wishful thinking at best, their only hope was that Starfleet was negotiating on their behalf. And hopefully not taking too long to do so. Though Hoshi had few illusions as to the speed with which Starfleet would engage in any diplomatic solution.

Her thoughts turned back to the question of food. All of a sudden, she remembered how the old women in the village where she spent her summers fed their toothless grandchildren by chewing the food for them, before putting the paste in the babies' mouths. They had kept delivering T'Pol's rations and she had been picking them up as if nothing happened. Even after trading half of them away she still had a reserve of grain cakes with the exact mix of nutrients for the Vulcan. It would be an easy matter... Hoshi stopped in her thoughts, conscious of possible incompatibility risks, including the fact that perhaps T'Pol might strenuously object if she were awake. Strenuously enough to break her neck.

On the other hand, she had plenty of clues that the exchange of bodily fluids between Vulcan and Human would not be an issue, chemically at least. She had long deduced there was a relationship between Trip and T'Pol, aided by her keen reading of body language and the fact she was the one asked to locate crewmen whose whereabouts were unknown. There were a few times when she had reported on Trip or T'Pol's location in their respective cabins without mentioning the other's lifeform in close vicinity. She was beyond certain that the two had a physical relationship even before it became somewhat common knowledge aboard Enterprise, reading it in the engineer's relaxed stance on certain mornings, though the Vulcan was a much harder read. Hoshi smiled to herself, pretty certain that her neck would not be broken. If nothing else, she had a protective blackmail gambit.

xx

Hoshi looked up at the small barred window and the dim light filtering through. It had been nine days already and T'Pol was still not waking up. At least she was not dead and Hoshi's administrations of food and water had obviously been enough to keep her alive, though barely if she went by the visible thinning of the Vulcan's arms and legs. But Hoshi had to consider the possibility T'Pol would die and that she would be left alone. And she was staring at the light rectangle cut by the window, trying to find answers to a single question: what would she do then?

She was an inmate in a breeding camp, she was two months pregnant with something the mere thought of which made her sick to her stomach, and any escape was out of the question. And she was bald, an additional blow to her physical integrity, just as bad as the rounding globe of her belly. She had liked her hair the way it was and she had liked her body the way it was. And she wanted both back. T'Pol had talked about a temporary follicle-blocking agent and she clung to the thought the physical invasion was temporary as well with all her mental strength but the black wings of despair were starting to brush against her mind again. She felt close to a renewed sense of horror at the idea an alien was clawing its way to life inside of her. She tried to hold on to the mantra that had been keeping her sane over the past six weeks, that it was a temporary borrowing of a small part of her, something external and neutral that she had no connection with. But try as she might, she was getting overwhelmed again, by the chemical changes in her body, by the thought of the alien lifeform inside her, by her utter and complete rejection of everything that had to do with it. She wanted it to die.

But what would she do if it was T'Pol who died? At that moment, Hoshi saw a clear path out of her predicament. Something that would take care of all problems. She was the daughter of an ancient culture of warriors and widows that would choose death over being a victim. She was tired of being scared and anxious and she would not let the Nints decide her fate. If T'Pol died she would kill herself. That would deprive the Nints of their cursed progeny and of a breeding asset. She had never felt so at peace with a decision.

She walked over to T'Pol's cot, it was time for the morning rituals of food and water. She had lost any reserve or qualms along the way and just took care of things as she would for herself. It was a good thing that Japanese culture was not squeamish or shy about bodies. She reached over to turn her and avoid pressure ulcers. The motion had become a lot easier now that the wounds had closed and the swelling had subsided, and she was no longer so worried that she was hurting her. A hand suddenly clamped on her wrist, drawing a small shriek from Hoshi. She froze, heart beating furiously, trying to make sense of what was going on.

"Life must always prevail or there are no alternatives" T'Pol rasped, eyes still closed. Then the grip on Hoshi's wrist was released and her hand went limp. Hoshi knew instinctively that the Vulcan was unconscious again. She sat on her heels, massaging her wrist of the shadow hold. Did T'Pol sense her thoughts? What did she mean 'Life shall always prevail or there are no alternatives'. Perhaps T'Pol had been hallucinating and this had nothing to do with Hoshi's decision. _Yeah, right, like it didn't_ , her inner voice answered. But still, what did it mean?

Hoshi sat on the cot, trying to understand the cryptic saying. The Vulcan must have been mixing two metaphors, her comatose mind unaware she was not making sense. Yes, that's what it must be… Or did she mean 'life shall always prevail, there are no alternatives'. Like a direct order to stay alive. That wasn't exactly what she wanted to hear. But she had said " **or** there are no alternatives." Meaning that if she was alive she might find a way out, or things could happen, whereas otherwise if there was no life, there really was no alternatives. Hoshi sighed. Just when she had reached what she thought was a foolproof solution to her dilemma, trust the Vulcan to bring it all crashing down around her ears. Now instead of feeling serene in the face of death she was tied in knots trying to figure out what T'Pol meant.

On the other hand she now knew T'Pol was alive and conscious somewhere in there. And that she wouldn't die. Life must always prevail indeed. Fine, let the prevailing begin and the alternatives show themselves. She, Hoshi Sato, was ready.

It took another four days for T'Pol to emerge from a healing trance, weak as a kitten and quite unable to stand up. Hoshi was so happy and relieved she was chattering, fully aware she was excitedly chirping about everything and anything, and for once not caring about the Vulcan's reaction. They each had a right to be the person they were. If she could deal with T'Pol's terse and didactic pronouncements and take care of her for a long two weeks, well, then T'Pol better be able to deal with her enthusiasm. And Hoshi finally realized that it made no difference at all to the Vulcan and that she had never needed to suppress who she was in order to fit into her idea of how an officer needed to behave.

x

"You need to walk." Hoshi was looking straight at her superior officer, who was sitting on the edge of the cot. She was looking less like skin and bones, courtesy of the additional generic grain cake that Hoshi kept finding in her rucksack, even though the camp had stopped all extra distribution of food, whether an inmate was pregnant or not, courtesy of the Nints uncovered the sabotage of their database. But it had been days since T'Pol had woken up and she still could stand up only for a limited amount of time. They both knew that walking would require some type of rehabilitation. And that any hint of physical disability would condemn T'Pol to the plight of the women who were too old or otherwise deemed unfit for breeding.

T'Pol looked straight back at her. "Whether I am able to walk or not will not make a difference." Hoshi stared back uncomprehendingly. T'Pol sighed, almost a human sigh, and went on "Vulcan physiology is uniquely adapted to our lifespan and the inhospitable environment on Vulcan. Having a child requires a significant expenditure of energy for many years. Vulcan females can only conceive for a few days on a cyclical basis of seven years or so. The cycle cannot be forced." T'Pol hesitated, as if that was not entirely true, then went on "Even if the Nint found a way to render an offspring viable, I simply cannot become pregnant for another few years." T'Pol went on "I am most likely safe for this cycle, but chances are that I will be killed in three months."

Hoshi stared at T'Pol in wide-eyed shock. All of this had been for nothing?! She felt a rush of rebellion course through her. The hell it had. "Life must always prevail or there are no alternatives," she told T'Pol, who raised an eyebrow in astonished silence. "What that means is that we have three months to figure out how to get out of here." Or for Starfleet to negotiate our freedom, Hoshi thought, though she didn't say it out loud, she had too many qualms as to that happening. She added "And to get out of here, you need to walk."

She marched to the bed and forcibly grabbed T'Pol "Come". She had spent weeks nursing the Vulcan back to health, now was not the time to worry about physical contact. Hoshi pulled T'Pol to her feet and in the same motion pulled her arm around her neck, holding on to her . She took one step forward, the movement forcing T'Pol out of balance, which meant she had to get her feet under her to prevent a fall. They would circle the cell twenty-three hours a day if that's what it took, but T'Pol would be walking.


	14. Solidarity

"What did you say?"

The inmate turned to Hoshi to confirm the rumor that had spread like wildfire in the line snaking down to the food tables "There will be an inspection tomorrow."

Hoshi's heart sank. Inspections were long draw-out affairs where everyone had to stand at attention in the courtyard while something was inspected, usually nothing more than the ability of the section directors to figure out how many rows it took to line up all their guests. As far as she knew, if one of the inmates collapsed during the inspection and she was not pregnant, she was taken away and never seen again. There had been three inspections in the three months she had been at the camp, and this one was too early by a week.

She walked back up to their cell in silence and related the troubling news. T'Pol was unconcerned when she heard the inspection was to take place the day after "I will be fine" she just told Hoshi.

Hoshi eyed her dubitatively. T'Pol was able to stand for a while and walk the length of the cell, but she was not quite back on her feet and the inspections were brutally long. They would have to be creative. She didn't say anything, but she didn't see how they were going to pull it off.

xx

Hoshi heard the comings and goings outside her cell, the guards banging the doors, calling for the women to get up and get out, ready to make sure everyone was out. Only when the inspection was finished would the women be allowed back in. Two sharp rasps rang against the door to their cell making Hoshi jump in spite of herself. She looked over at T'Pol who was sitting on her cot, unperturbed. Well, she, Hoshi, was perturbed for both of them, thank you. T'Pol was able to walk the cell unaided a few times, slowly, but they yet had to navigate stairs or uneven ground. There was no choice. If they didn't move soon, the guard would open the door to their cell and start pressing them to run. And that, she could not afford to let happen.

The way downstairs was a slow one, T'Pol hanging on to the banister for dear life, the slowness of their progress hidden in the general chaos as lines of women kept moving up and down the staircase. The agitation was worse than usual and Hoshi saw several of the women pass her and T'Pol down the stairs repeatedly, as if they kept forgetting something and had to retrace their steps.

Hoshi's stomach tightened as she saw the heavy doors leading to the outside. They had been slower than usual, which meant that the spaces closest to the building would be taken. They might have to walk yards just to get their place in line. She had hoped to be able to stick as close to the barracks as possible, entertaining the delusion that if anything happened she could just push T'Pol hard into the building and nobody would be the wiser for it. Hoshi grabbed T'Pol's arm in a gesture that looked friendly and hid the iron grip she maintained on the Commander, serving as both her guide and a crutch. To Hoshi's immense relief, there were a couple of free spots right next to the door. She wondered why nobody had claimed them yet, looking hesitantly at the women around her as she took her place. One of them nodded their approval and Hoshi started breathing just a little bit easier. A space that close to the barracks was worth gold. She imagined leaning T'Pol against the wall when this was over and both being able to pretend she was relaxing, not that the wall was the only thing holding her up.

"I will be fine" T'Pol said again, looking straight at the Ensign. Hoshi nodded. She knew Vulcans had a great deal of control over their physiology. So long as the inspection didn't last too long, they might actually get away with it. But there were limits to anything.

The inspection lasted an eternity. Finally, the inmates were allowed to go back inside and Hoshi was able to turn and look at T'Pol. Her heart almost stopped when she did. The Vulcan was flushed an unhealthy shade of green and her eyes were unfocused. Hoshi knew with a sinking certainty that T'Pol was going to fall and there was no way she could hide it from the guards.

Loud screams coming from her back made her turn around. She saw three females starting a fight, another one jump in the melee, and guards running at the combatants from all corners. Physical fights were exceedingly rare in the camp, actually this was the first instance she had seen. The prohibition against close contact or communication aimed at preventing the kind of intimacy that could lead to fighting. The perpetrators would probably spend the night in isolation.

Hoshi turned back to T'Pol, trying to think how she was going to hide her fall. She almost had a heart attack. There was no Vulcan standing there, nor was there any sign of one passed out in the dirt. Hoshi started looking wildly all around, trying to figure out where the Commander was. An Arumid woman grabbed her arm "Shhh, she's in the building." Hoshi looked at her uncomprehendingly. "Go" the woman hissed, pushing her forward. Hoshi stepped into the cool of the building and was met by the sight of T'Pol sitting on the ground and obviously in the process of regaining consciousness, in the middle of a group of women waiting like annunciating angels, a couple of them holding grain cakes and water. Hoshi looked over the women and suddenly realized she had seen them before. These were the same women who had gone up and down the staircase, providing cover and distraction she now realized while the two of them were painstakingly making their way downstairs. They were also the women who had surrounded her and T'Pol during roll call and had kept two spaces free for them. And suddenly Hoshi understood that the fight had been staged to distract the guards and allow the others to spirit T'Pol away before she fell and could be noticed by the guards.

She looked at the women. "Thank you" she said. There was not much else that could be said. One of the more mature women in the group came to her "We know what she did" the woman told Hoshi "This is our way of expressing our thanks. She took care of us and we take care of her." She nodded at the others and the females all got up, ready to go back to their cell. The guards would come back soon and prevent any further communication. Hoshi was still shellshocked. Something else suddenly came to her mind "The extra cakes?" she asked. The other woman spoke without turning fully "Nobody went hungry" she said "if all of us give a tiny sliver, the one who gives you her grain cake receives much more than she gave."

Hoshi looked at the retreating figures, then at her CO. T'Pol was no longer flushed an unhealthy shade of green. Hoshi could take it from there, but she had to act fast. They needed to get going on the staircase right away in order to have any hope of getting to their cell before the guards came back. Grabbing T'Pol by the waist, she passed her arm over her neck and proceeded to help her up the steps.

Xx

It had only been a month since the Verklaevs, and in the remote background, Starfleet, had started negotiating, or trying to, with the Nints, a blink of an eye in diplomatic terms and an eternity in hostage terms.

While the camp puttered along its own monstrous routine and the Nint representatives conferred with the Verklaevs and the other races before the Overarching Council, and nodded, protested, assented, denied, and vehemently decried the accusations that were being levelled at them without reaching any agreement or making any progress, for an agreement could not be reached and negotiations could not be successful since it would mean revealing the secret of the Nint camps and what they had been up to, the Special Nint Governmental Committee was engaging in a plan of action that would forever suppress all traces of their attempt at creating a genetic army.

The Committee had been unable to reach consensus on the question of the alien females, caught between those factions who argued that ransoming the aliens was the preferred option and that little care should be paid to what they could report, for the word of two aliens would always be outweighed by the word of true Dalgorts, and those factions that countered that a complete obliteration of everything to do with the camps was necessary, including the aliens. The fact that releasing the aliens would be of an immensurable benefit, wealth-wise, to all those sitting on the governmental committee, little did it matter if that also helped the other Dalgort worlds, rendered the decision even more contentious. Each faction decried the other as a traitor, either to the Nint value system or to the Nint governing structure, read Committee members' interests.

In the midst of raucous name-calling about what to do with the aliens, the question of what to do with the camps took precedence as the investigation team sent by the Overarching Council was starting to focus on to the Barest'ig range. The need for quick action was imperative and a plan was put in place. A day two weeks in the future was selected and directives went out that on that day all the camps must be destroyed. What was to happen to their occupants was so confidential that it could not and would not be committed to recording of any kind. But the Committee felt certain that the Arumids would be silenced long enough for their plight to disappear from political memory. And some on the Committee who still remembered about the aliens thought that if they happened to disappear in the process, well, nobody would be the worse for it.

Slowly, methodically, the events of the future were being put in place. This time the clouds massing on the horizon were of a different kind altogether.


	15. Phlox's Guilt

Archer was looking at the person in front of him in disbelief.

"Phlox?"

"It would just be for a little while, Captain" the Denobulan replied. "A short leave of absence. You know as well as I do that there is nothing for me to do in the current mission. We're just a glorified taxi service for self-important dignitaries in the safest corner of the galaxy."

"But –" Archer wasn't sure where to start. Mostly because Phlox was right and that had the unfortunate effect of pre-empting pretty much everything he was going to say. But he had so many other objections to what the doctor had just told him, starting with the fact that he was going to get a brand new, if temporary, chief medical officer, courtesy of the Intergalactic Medical Exchange, an alien whom he had never met and whose type he didn't even know. The crew would have to adapt to another change in personnel at the time when they were still reeling from the disappearance of T'Pol and Hoshi. This was just not good timing, and the doctor knew it, goddammit.

"Captain" Dr Phlox interrupted him again "Let me remind you that I am not part of Starfleet. There is nothing to prevent me from taking a short leave of absence to conduct my own research."

Suddenly, Archer had an epiphany about what exactly the doctor was intending to do. He wouldn't, would he? He squinted at Phlox "And where will you be conducting your research."

The Denobulan shuffled his feet, looked down at his shoes. Archer banged on the table. He knew it! "You're not going to Dalgort, are you?!"

"I can go anywhere I-" Phlox started. This time he was the one that was interrupted.

"I can't believe you would!" Archer was furious, though he would have been hard pressed to explain why. "You're letting your guilt act for you, Phlox! I've told you a hundred times, it was not your fault. I would have done the same thing! There was nobody better equipped to deal with the unexpected than T'Pol."

Phlox didn't retort that T'Pol had been injured and out of commission. That was the crux of his inability to let things go. It was not that he had left the women behind, for she was certainly worth a few men in a fight, but that he had left a patient fend for herself. And to add abuse to injury, not just any patient, but the only other alien aboard Enterprise. "I just need to do this, Captain." he said softly.

Archer looked at him silently for a few seconds. A phrase sprung back to his mind "For Humans, guilt can be a powerful motivator." Who had said that? Ah, yes, he remembered. It was the old T'Pol in the expanse. Well, if they ever met again he could now tell her that guilt was a powerful motivator for Denobulans as well. He felt a twinge. What would she say if she knew her younger self was missing in action. He brought his attention back to the doctor.

"Come on, Phlox, you know what they're like. You can't set foot on Nint, not after what happened, and it's not like the Verkaels will exactly throw their doors open for you."

"Actually", the doctor replied "I have been in contact with the Overarching Council after I delivered my report. The Verkaels are quite open to my visiting. I pointed out a couple of areas of medicine in which they might benefit from a more advanced perspective." He hastened to add "A Denobulan perspective, not Starfleet."

Archer stared at Phlox. He wasn't sure anymore if the doctor was quick to exclude Starfleet behalf out of an ethical concern with sharing their information or out of disgust at how little Starfleet had done to unravel the situation. What Phlox didn't know, and Archer couldn't tell anyone lest he have to kill them, was that Starfleet had actually been hard at work behind the scene trying to get their people out but had been singularly unsuccessful in the face of Nint pure and incomprehensible stubbornness, as if they had something to hide. But Starfleet was afraid it would become open-season on its people across the galaxy if others knew how much energy and money the organization was willing to spend to get them back. Thus the need for extreme confidentiality.

Hell, they hadn't even told T'Pau or Soval about it. Though he had to admit there were quite a few other very valid reasons not to let T'Pol's mother's close friend or her mentor in on her disappearance quite yet, not the least of which that everyone involved preferred to have their heads firmly attached to their bodies. He had a sudden inkling this may have had something to do with Starfleet's decision to not report T'Pol and Hoshi as dead, a rather quick reversal given the usual speed and inertia of the bureaucratic function.

Archer passed a hand over his forehead. He was going to get a headache, he just knew it. And he knew why, too. Part of him wanted to leave Enterprise behind and go with the doctor do research on Dalgort. And yet he couldn't. His was a Starfleet captain first and foremost. He suddenly saw a possible way out of his predicament. Not the most direct solution, but perhaps…

He gave Phlox a pointed look "I don't know, doctor, the idea of you traveling on your own to Dalgort. It's not the most hospitable place, and it's not the safest trip. How are you going to get there?"

"I've been in contact with a Denobulan freighter" the doctor huffed back. "They agreed to make a detour and rendezvous with us. With your permission captain" he added as an afterthought.

"And you're going all alone?"

Phlox stared at Archer in surprise. Of course he was going alone. Wasn't that obvious? He wasn't going to subvert anyone on the crew. "I am not taking anyone from Enterprise with me, if that's what you're wondering" the doctor sounded insulted.

"But what if someone from Enterprise were to come with you?"

Phlox looked at Archer contemplatively. The captain knew he was playing with fire. There was no way Jonathan could come with him, Starfleet would have his hide. And then there would be nothing for T'Pol and Hoshi to come back to. Or him or Trip. "What exactly do you have in mind?" he asked suspiciously.

In the meantime Archer had considered all possibilities and realized he had been rash. Enterprise was already without its Science Officer, Chief Engineer, Communications Officer, and now Chief Medical Officer. If he let his Tactical Officer go also, just him and his Helmsman, he might as well not have a ship.

Oh, he could pull wool over Dubrovsky's eyes and whichever other admiral would reach him, and hide the fact he was without the majority of his senior officers. Not that he thought they would contact him anyway. He had a good idea how Starfleet had purposefully sent him on the most routine mission in the most unexcited corner of space and planned to leave him there to stew until they got his crew back, or didn't, too worried he would be tempted to take matters in his own hands if he were nearby. Which to be honest, he would. Life on the frontier of space didn't exactly predispose one towards patience with recalcitrant interlocutors when knocking heads was so much more efficient.

But though he knew the space quadrant they were in was beyond safe, meaning boring, two seasoned officers and a captain was about the absolute minimum necessary to conduct their mission. Less, and he would be guilty of dereliction of duty. Archer knew when to take chances, but he also knew when to fold. He looked at Phlox resignedly. "How long till you get there?"

"It's a five week trip on the freighter" the doctor answered. "My hope is that by the time I get there they'll be free and all I've left to do is be a visiting expert at the medical academy."

Five weeks more. Everything dragged on forever it seemed. "How long has it been?" Archer heard himself ask Phlox in a whisper.

"Fourteen weeks and three days, Captain", the doctor replied right away. Archer nodded. Phlox would know to the day. They'd already been without T'Pol and Hoshi for over three months. What was Starfleet doing exactly?

"But Captain" the Denobulan was going on "I realize that there are things I am not privy to, and for good reason, I believe, such as the status of current negotiations were Starfleet to choose to negotiate, hmmm." Phlox and Archer locked gazes. "But," the doctor went on, "if there were negotiations going on, and if they were positive, one would hope that one would be apprised of that fact ahead of time."

Archer nodded slowly. "I can't say what's going on, but if I were to learn anything I am sure I would want to let you know ahead of time."

Phlox smiled broadly. "We understand each other, Captain. I will be back in a few months."

Archer knew Phlox would be back. If only because he left his menagerie behind. If he were really leaving, the doctor would have booked a whole starcraft, not just a berth on a freighter, and taken all his cages with him. He also noted that the couple of months had become a few. He was not surprised. He just hoped that Phlox replacement would be up to snuff.

xx

On Dalgort, in the Greater Kingdom of Nint, at the foot of the Barest'ig range, birds of a different sort were quietly being assembled in one of the many canyons that the range wrinkled into. In another close-by canyon, two aliens were once again drawing escape plans, unaware that they were the subject of the laser-like focus of a Denobulan doctor, an entire starship, a Special Governmental Committee, the Verklaevs, and Starfleet.

An escape meant physical readiness, whether one was pregnant or recently recovering from a brutal beating. Which is why Hoshi was using every muscle of her body to hold a plank position while T'Pol was bench pressing her easily, still silently amazed at the Vulcan's strength even after going through this particular set on a daily basis. T'Pol had devised a series of calisthenic exercises for the two of them to regain or maintain peak physical conditioning, letting Hoshi's own weight do the training for her, and using Hoshi as a weight for hers.

It relieved the endlessness of their days. They seemed to have fallen out of sight and mind of the Nint authorities and the camp director, a state of affairs which suited them perfectly. Expressing their cultural bias, Hoshi took it as a sign that Starfleet was negotiating on their behalf while T'Pol thought it would be illogical for Starfleet to spend time and energy on two easily replaceable officers and was awaiting a quick strike, from which they might or might not walk out alive.

Thus each day turned into the other until another week had gone by, and each week turned into another.


	16. The March

The bang resonated like a whip, the cell shook, and all alerts started blaring. T'Pol jumped up at the small window, using the rails to hoist herself to where she could see through it. Three weeks of intense conditioning, under the semi-protection of the Arumids, had brought her back to her usual level of fitness. She jumped back down "Planes are attacking. Get ready."

Hoshi looked at her eyes-wide, trying to shed the cobwebs from much needed sleep. Planes? What planes? And get ready for what? Before she could articulate her thoughts to herself, T'Pol had yanked her from where she lay and brought her to a corner of the cell, shielding her with her body.

Hoshi had tried once before to address what she felt was the overprotectiveness of her commanding officer, letting her know that she did not need to be coddled. The Commander had eyed her expressionlessly "Ensign Sato, while I understand your belief that your pregnancy is in no way impacting your physical readiness, your response time is 4% slower, your gait is 2% off-balance, your body temperature is slightly elevated, making your physiological processes less efficient, and as a result, your reflexes are 0.1 seconds slower than is usual for you." Hoshi had stared at her slack-jawed, part of her wondering if T'Pol was actually bullshitting her. She would never be able to tell if the Vulcan was pulling numbers out of her patootie or if she had indeed noticed these variations and Hoshi was indeed slightly off on all her efficiency readings. Knowing the thoroughness with which Vulcans in general, and T'Pol in particular, approached anything remotely scientific, she had decided to wisely err on the side that T'Pol was not making this up, that she was accurately describing a state of fact. But still…

Explosions were rocking the entire building. Hoshi felt the ground shake and waited to hear about hull plating, momentarily brought back to the many times when Enterprise had been under attack. She shook her head clear. They were not on Enterprise and she didn't think the barracks had any hull plating.

Suddenly the door to their cell was thrown open. "Get out! Get out!" the guards were running past the doors, urging the inmates out. Hoshi started to the door, felt the restraining hand of T'Pol. "This could be a trap" the Vulcan said. Hoshi had to agree. She wouldn't put it past the Nints to stage a widespread prisoner escape and use that as an excuse to get rid of all of them. T'Pol cautiously walked up to the door, motioning for Hoshi to stay behind. She flattened herself against the wall, looking up and down the hallway. She saw several women come out of their cell, first timidly, then, when they realized nothing was truly holding them back, in a flow of running bodies, many of them pregnant. The guards came back on the run behind them, urging them out. "Get out! They are attacking!" T'Pol listened intently but she couldn't hear the sound of guns in the courtyard, or any other sound. Silence fell. All of a sudden a new explosion shook the air. The planes must have been refueling and restocking. They were back. "Come, we have to leave" T'Pol said to Hoshi, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the surrounding chaos. Before they left, she grabbed the rucksack with their stockpile of grain cakes and stashed their thin blankets into the other, slipping the bags over her head, one on each side.

Soon they were out of the barracks, in the courtyard, milling with the hundreds of other surprised women already there. T'Pol led Hoshi to the side of the crowd, where she could have a vantage view of what was happening, from far in the back towards where the attacking planes were coming from to the camp entrance in front. She saw phalanxes of Nint guards coming at a run, too neatly organized for it to be a reaction to a surprise attack. The whole thing must be a set-up. T'Pol looked up to the sky, where another wave of attack planes was coming in the distance, ready to drop ordnance. She had never seen Nint aircraft but she logically presumed these were Nint. She committed their shape to memory.

The light curtains that separated the sections from each other went off and soon the campgrounds were swarming with thousands of inmates. They all rushed to the outer fence that went the entire width of the canyon, the ones in front soon pushing back hard against those behind them, trying very hard not to get impaled on the steel spikes jutting from the chainlink fence. Guards with guns were posted on the other side, ready to fire if the spikes were ineffective. It hardly looked like a disorderly response to a surprise enemy attack.

Using the wall of the buildings as a shield, T'Pol slowly and methodically moved closer to the gate, Hoshi behind her. She didn't want to be among the first out, not knowing what the Nints intended to do, but she wanted to put more distance between them and the phalanxes of guards at the back of the crowd.

Suddenly a voice boomed at the crowd. "The Arumids have attacked the camp. You are being freed." A section of the fence opened up and thousands of inmates started streaming out. The statement of freedom was belied by the rows of armed guards lined up on each side of the opening, long lines of guards that extended into the distance The firsts in the crowd hesitantly moved forward between the armed lines. Nothing happened. The more courageous among them put one foot ahead of the other, then repeated, and started walking. And still, nothing happened. Heartened by the real possibility of freedom, the trickle became a torrent as rest of the prisoners surged forward, the thousands of inmates streaming through the break in the fence like water down a funnel. The ranks of guards and their arms prevented any kind of rush, the silent threat enough to cow the more daring back into place and their sheer presence calming the crowd into orderliness. Behind the large crowd of inmates, the phalanxes that T'Pol had first noted started closing in, preventing any retreat. Not that any of them wanted to go back.

The thousands of women started walking almost as one, nobody was too young or too old to fall back very far, nobody was too healthy to spring very far ahead. They advanced like a loose body, stretching along the road according to their speed, hesitation slowly giving way to elation. An hour went by and they were still walking, the camp a distant memory smoldering far in the back of them, the road stretching ahead endlessly. Hoshi was getting tired, the unusual sluggishness of her body slowing her down, always under the watchful eye of T'Pol, who matched her step. They both knew the Vulcan could easily carry her if the need arose.

And then the path carefully delineated by the lines of guards swerved away from the roadway into the rubble lining it, and the lines of guard were now marking a path across a barren landscape of short dried grass and knee high bushes that undulated up and down as far as the eye could see. The mass of women had no choice but to follow the path, more slowly this time, uncertain as to what they would find at the end of the way. The hesitation that had become joyful elation turned to gloomy hesitancy. Voices became muted, the happy laughter ceased. They kept walking under the mute threat of the guards guns and because the phalanxes at the rear were inexorably closing the path behind, pushing them forward.

For Hoshi, it all became a matter of walking breathlessly up a small hill, catching her breath on the way down the other side, a few yards of flat terrain, and then walking up another small elevation, again breathing hard. Suddenly the lines of guards stopped. Ahead of them, they could see hundreds of inmates, and still ahead, the ground dropped in a steep embankment. Past the embankment, a wide depression of mud flats extended between neighboring hills as far as the eye could see, with the shimmering promise of water in the far distance, and, even further away, the call of what may have been a green mass of trees.

T'Pol brought Hoshi's attention to the other side of the canyon, where huge masses of women were also coming to a stop at the mudflats, through different paths lined with different guards. It looked like this was the gathering point for perhaps all the camps. What had the camp director said? Hundreds of thousands of women? The canyon was wide and deep enough that they would all fit in there, with room to spare. From a tactical perspective, it was probably the worst spot to be in, boxed on all sides, very much like fish in a barrel.

An excited murmur ran through the crowd. "Namkarfeh!" The words flew from mouth to ear, picked up and said again so that each cluster around the speaker would hear it, and spread it in turn. Hoshi and T'Pol stared at each other blankly. They had no idea what Namkarfeh was but obviously the word was well received by the other inmates. "Excuse me, what is Namkarfeh?" Hoshi leaned to the woman next to her, whose hands had fluttered upward in merriment when she had heard the name. "Namkarfeh" the woman repeated as if it was self-evident "they're friends of the Arumids." She pointed at the land beckoning across the water. Hoshi exchanged a glance with T'Pol. Were they stepping from the frying pan into the fire?

The thousands of inmates coming on their back kept pressing them forward. Finally a few more enterprising souls ventured forward, scrambling down the slope and onto the mudflats, where the sucking mud slowed their progress through a crawl. Across the width of the canyon other hazardous souls ventured across in imitation. Once they realized one could walk on the mudflats without sinking, tens, hundreds and then thousands started forward too, each finding its own path in the couple of miles between the bordering hills. The guards stayed in place, fingers on the trigger, leaving no question as to whether the women had a choice other than going straight ahead.

T'Pol suspiciously eyed the mud flats and the progress of the women preceding her. It was obvious the flats were loaded with water and trudging through watery mud was not high on Vulcans' comfort list. She looked back at Hoshi, then looked ahead again. There was not much choice. She didn't trust this new development or what the Nints intended to do, but being outside of the camp already offered more options than being inside. The smell of the burning barracks reached them, finally spurring her forward. Checking that Hoshi was following, she stepped in the slurping mud. Her tunic had grown baggy enough or she had lost enough weight that she could carry the rucksacks inside her tunic, where they were protected from elements and thieves.

Behind her, Hoshi suppressed a smile as they made their way forward. The Vulcan reminded her of a cat she had once seen land in the middle of a large shallow puddle, who would delicately lift each paw and carefully shake it off before each step, all the way until she could clear the remaining puddle with a jump. She figured T'Pol would eventually resign herself to the fact there was no escaping the mud.

She herself was going through all the cuss words she knew in Japanese as she strained against the viscous pull. Once she finished those, she would switch to Standard, and then Klingonese. She would exhaust all the curse words in every language she knew, and perhaps by then they would have crossed those damn mud flats.


	17. The Mudflats

The warmth of the suns on her face woke Hoshi up, and she raised her head from where it had been nestled by the soft mud. Next to her, T'Pol was sitting in a meditation pause, eyes closed. The Vulcan would not lie down on the wet ground and looked utterly miserable, caked with mud, their blankets wrapped around her shoulders. The nights were warm and she had figured the Commander needed the blankets more than she did. The crowd of women was coming back to life under the heat of the suns, looking like so many creatures made of mud. It was time to start walking again, if that could be called walking. Slogging through molasses was closer to it.

Hours later, the suns were beating relentlessly on an army of ghosts. For it must have been ghosts, no other assembly could have achieved that same uniformity of look and form. They were staggering forward, haggardly, their feet bumping on invisible steps in the mud. Mud was their definite characteristic. Each member of the army looked the same, the drab tans of layers of muds plastered all over their arms and legs and bodies, hiding the equally drab short tunics they wore, of the same tone as the mud. Going up their neck, covering their face and their shaved heads. Many of them were pregnant. Once in a while, one of them staggered forward or backward more than usual and fell in the mud. Some got up again, another layer of wet clay weighing them down on top of all the other layers. Some stayed splayed where they fell, breathing the mud through their mouth and nose and eyes. The rest of the army would just walk over them, single-mindedly intent on getting to the water. On the other side of the water there lay Namkaferh, and the call of the promised land was enough to urge them forward, mindless of their fallen peers. The yielding bodies offered a dry foothold for a little while, then the combined weight of the walking army burrowed them further into the mud until there was no more than a funnel-like depression to mark their lives.

From far behind them, every so often dark planes would cross the skies, threatening clouds that rolled over the horizon, bringing death. Whenever they heard the buzzing of another squadron rising behind them, the mud-covered women would slow down and look over their shoulder and up at the sky, assessing. If the planes were far enough they would keep trudging ahead, pulling their feet off the mud with a smacking sound and plopping them down again in an exhausting pas de deux, ever closer to a final fall. Once the planes came near, they would scurry and slide across the landscape like so many ants, anxious to escape the laser beams and bullets that would strafe them. But whoever was flying them was obviously doing it in a lazy, desultory way. The goal was not extermination, it was to push the herd forward, to keep them moving through the mud flats, away from the barracks burning far in the distance behind them, plumes of billowing black smoke the only clue as to their location.

Finally the water in the distance seemed to be getting closer, the mouth of the canyon seemed to open wider. For most of the women, it was the third day without food and water, other than the brackish water they might access for a few seconds if they dug down fast enough into the mud. T'Pol wouldn't have to drink for quite a while yet, but she was getting worried about Hoshi. It had been no exertion for the Vulcan to dig and get a fair amount of water, and the blankets had proven a useful filter, though they couldn't mask the taste, but she wasn't sure how long Hoshi could drink the unsanitary brew without adverse effect. She sat cross-legged in the mud, keeping a silent vigil, while the younger woman slept, exhausted by the endless slog. In another hour, she would have to wake her again and they would resume their long march to the edge of the water they could see shimmering a few miles away, and beyond to the unknown.

She tensed without seeming to, noticing the two mud-covered silhouettes that were making their way towards her. The fact that doing so took them in a direction other than to the water gave her an inkling this was not a social visit. She looked up at the two apparitions. Only the whites of their respective eyes showed among the uniform drab tan of the mud. The one closest to her rasped in an unfriendly tone

"You are hiding things." T'Pol thought they couldn't know of the food, they were careful to eat only at night, when the sun was out. Perhaps they had noticed the angular edges of the rucksack she kept hidden under her tunic, so different from the round bellies all around.

T'Pol brought her leg under her, ready to spring into action. If word they had food spread across the thousands of women, still densely packed across the mud flats in spite of the losses to exhaustion and planes, she didn't give much of their chances of surviving the discovery.

"What do you want?" she asked. Perhaps if the women's wants were modest there would be a way to accommodate them.

"We want what you have" the woman replied. T'Pol was suddenly reminded of their first night, trying to get to the shuttle and the Arumids stopping them with the same kind of request. If it had not been for them, they would have reached the shuttle in time and she wouldn't be sitting in the wretched wetness of the mud flats. This did not exactly dispose her positively towards the women.

"We will be at the water by nightfall, closed to Namkaferh" she retorted, aware this was an overly broad generalization as it might still take another day or even two to reach the water. She was hopeful the vague statement and its promise of what was to come would be enough to derail the women from their quest.

Unfortunately the Arumids tended to have a one-track mind. She saw the companion of the first woman move to the opposite side of her. The two were obviously preparing a pincher attack, one on each side, probably counting on the march to have weakened their quarry so that she would easily be overcome. If T'Pol had not been tired and wet and miserable she might have lifted an eyebrow at the presumption. But she was in no mood to dither.

She felt more than saw the first woman rush her while she kept an eye on her companion. The first woman encountered only air as she tried to grab her, looking up in surprise too late to avoid a full collision with her companion, aided in her motion forward by the Vulcan who had grabbed her arm and propelled her like a projectile. The two Arumids found themselves sitting in the mud, dizzy and out of breath, unsure of what had happened.

"Kroykah." With that singularly short expression, T'Pol shook Hoshi awake, who sat up blinking as she looked at the two women sitting right next to her. T'Pol gave her a hand up and they started trudging towards the water with the rest of the women, the Vulcan in the back where she could keep an eye on the two Arumids. It was doubtful they had the energy to try again but she was not taking any chances.

xx

The camp director was staring alternatively at the lightpadd in his hands and at the guard who had brought it.

"What is this?" he asked. The guard didn't move a muscle, aware the camp director would probably not be satisfied with the answer 'it's a lightpadd.' He had learned from long experience that the higher ups succeeded through nepotism, not performance, and that it was better to remain silent in all situations.

In this case, he was right, as the camp director was not looking for an answer, or would have been dissatisfied with any answer that might have been provided. He was looking at the lightpadd with a mixture of anger and despondence. Nothing had been going right since these two aliens had been committed to his camp. Here he was, happily relieved that the latest course adjustment by the government meant that nobody would ever be aware his camp's numbers were off by over 100% and that there would be no questions, no lightreport, nothing. And now this.

He glowered at the lightpadd again but the information on it didn't change. The camp director had to restrain himself from throwing the lightpadd at the guard, hopefully taking his head off in the process. The whole thing smacked of an inept bureaucrat's approach. He didn't have any issues with others, like him, getting to where they were purely on the strings of nepotism except when that factor collided with his own best interest.

So much like incompetent fools to forward directives according to their level of complexity. Destroying all the camps had been a complex, mutli-faceted endeavor, which had required the coordination of massive amounts of resources and material. So they transmitted the directive first because of the sheer amount of planning time necessary. Now that the camps were smoldering ruins, emptied of their occupants, nothing remaining on the surface that could identify them, the nincompoops issued their second, less complex, directive: "Destroy the two aliens".

That was fine and well, but how was he to do that now that the camp occupants had been released in the wild as per the prior directive? He went to the window, staring over the smoldering ruins, the only sign that the camp had once been occupied, and by thousands. His thoughts turned to the occupants currently in a long march between the camp and the water, from where they would want to reach Namkarfeh. Except that Namkarfeh may no longer be willing to host the Arumids once the Nints had finished telling them about the progeny they were bringing along.

Still, it should be easy to spot the aliens on the way to the mudflats. And even if he didn't find them there, they would show up when they tried to cross to Namkarfeh. "Come with me" he barked at the guard. They would hovercraft to the mudflats. If they didn't find the aliens there, he would send word back to the Committee along with a copy of the lightorder telling him to release all the camp occupants. That would protect him. It was up to the Committee what to do next.


	18. No Man's Land

It took the rest of that day and another full day before they reached the end of the mudflats, the first few hundreds of many thousands. The water they had seen shimmering in the distance was a river, more a gathering of flat shallows than a true river worth its name, but a river nonetheless. The women were massing up on a muddy strip of land, an irregularly shaped rectangle several hundred feet long and wide, right before the shallows deepened into a channel no more than fifty feet wide. On the other side of the channel, Namkaferh's tall trees and lush vegetation beckoned enticingly, no more than a hundred yards away. They stood in stark contrast to the barren and dry hills of Nint, stunted by the diagmagnetous minerals of the Barest'ig range.

More women kept making their way to the end of the mud flats and to the muddy strip, hundreds of them. T'Pol maneuvered Hoshi to the far side of the strip, away from the ever increasing crush of bodies, where they could observe what was going on and strategize.

Hoshi was wondering why the Arumids were not crossing the channel when the first wave of women resolutely entered the knee-deep water, intent on making their way to the other side. Suddenly the echoing report of rapid fire guns was heard and the women fell like so many flowers, disappearing soundlessly under the surface, or bobbing along the slow current until they were carried out of sight. A ripple of fear shook the Arumids remaining on the muddy strip. Some looked to turn around and go back to Nint, finding their way blocked by the thousands of women arriving behind them, and beyond the women, by the dark planes circling the sky. Their way back barred, their way forward impossible, they had no option but to wait. The planes did not fire at them so long as they stayed and the guns on Namkarfeh were silent so long as they didn't enter the water.

More women kept arriving on the muddy strip, pushing and shoving and crowding those already there. And then there were too many of them. And as if on a signal, the women on the strip launched themselves across the channel in one overpowering wave of bodies, clambering over those that were felled by the guns, their numbers too great to fully annihilate, until a portion of them reached the other side. And then the guns went quiet as they disappeared in the vegetation. Behind them the muddy strip started filling up again.

Hoshi and T'Pol had remained at the edge of the strip, watching the events unfold.

"I don't understand, why are they firing?" Hoshi asked T'Pol.

The Vulcan seemed as nonplussed as she felt. "It seems the Arumids are not welcome wherever they are" she finally hazarded. But according to what the Arumids had said the people in Namkarfeh were their friends. It was highly illogical that they would behave any other way than welcoming to their suddenly freed brethren. Unless the Namkarfehs knew the women presented a risk of racial invasion, though the logical assumption was that the Nints had not been overly communicative about what exactly that risk was.

She looked at Hoshi and her swollen belly. If the reason for the carnage was the genetic offspring that the Arumids were carrying, the ensign would be in grave danger on Namkarfeh. In spite of her extreme reluctance, she saw only one way out of their predicament.

"Even if we manage to cross the river unharmed" she told Hoshi "we are not Arumids and may find ourselves in the same situation as the one we were in, except that our jailers will be kin of our former cellmates."

Hoshi was exhausted, from the march, from the shock of seeing these women, who thought they were finally on safe ground, being gunned down. "What do you suggest we do?" she asked.

"The Nints are pushing all of us into Namkarfeh territory." T'Pol turned to look upriver, at the bend a short distance away from which the water came. "We can follow the river upstream instead of going where they are trying to lead us."

"Do you know where that will take us?"

"I do not recall it showing up on the maps. It must have been a secondary geographical feature. But based on its direction, the river comes from further up the mountains." T'Pol turned to Hoshi. "Also part of the Barest'ig range. The diamagnetic nature of the minerals will prevent our detection." She didn't add it would still be Nint territory. Not their first choice, by far, but a safe one.

Hoshi was sitting on her haunches, belly perched precariously on her knees. "And how do we know we're not just going back to what we have been through, only worse?" she asked.

"We do not, Ensign" T'Pol answered, "but we do know there is a high probability we will get killed if we proceed forward with the rest of them. We're exchanging a certainty for possibilities."

Hoshi looked back at the thousands of women assembling over the muddy strip once again "So what do we do exactly?"

"When the next group rushes across the channel, we will take advantage of the general confusion to follow the river upstream instead. The Namkarfehs will be focused on the women who are trying to get across, not us. That is an assumption with a high level of probability." T'Pol said. She looked at Hoshi "How are you doing, Ensign?"

Hoshi laughed, a short harsh laugh "How about I tell you once we get out of this mess, Commander. Perhaps by then I'll actually know."

xx

The camp director reported to the Special Governmental Committee that he had been unable to find the aliens on the mudflats. He didn't add that he wouldn't have recognized his own brother and his own mother in there, they all looked the same, mud figures whose recognizable characteristics were erased under layers of mud. But he did say that, if the aliens had survived the trek through the flats, and if they survived the crossing to Namkarfeh, they would be easily recognizable and could be dispatched as the Committee saw fit.

The Committee reconvened and debated some more, its spirits lifted by the orderly and successful eradication of the camp network and lifted still higher by the unknowing contribution of the Namkarfehs, worried that they could be invaded by an army of Nint-carrying Arumids, though, predictably, they had not been exactly told about certain genetic modifications carried by those Nints. But as it is always difficult to give up when in the middle of a winning streak, the Committee decided to leverage its current run of luck and pursue its plans to eradicate the aliens.

As the Nints would eventually discover, there are times when the more is the enemy of the good. In their haste to remove any trace of the aliens and out of a desire to be as thorough as they could, the Nints considered all options, starting with the possibility that the aliens would somehow survive the march and the crossing to Namkarfeh and ending with the possibility that the camp director lied and that the aliens had escaped along the way. Concerned about addressing all eventualities, the Committee speedily prodded the Nint government to publish pictures of the aliens, both before their capture and after their internment, with ample warning to the general population that these dangerous criminals had escaped from the highest security-level prison and should be shot on sight. Confident that, if the Namkarfehs didn't deal with the aliens, some well-intentioned Nint citizen would, the Committee proceeded to sit back and wait for the fruits of its labor. Not realizing that they had pushed their government to what amounted to an open admission that they had held the aliens. Nepotism is not always the best way to select decision-makers.

In the meantime, the litnews ran non-stop on the ubiquitous globes that could be found in all public and private places on Nint in order to keep the population informed of the government's acts and positions, within reason, of course. The litnews flashed across the globe in a combination of light vectors, all the way to a small store in a small town clinging to the side of a small mountain at the foot of the Barest'ig range, only thirty miles or so from where the camps had been located.

There it was seen and easily decoded by a Nint female of indeterminate age, who had hovercrafted to the town for some minor errands from her lair higher up on the mountain. She stopped, looking at the litorb, trying to hide her hammering heart and sudden dry mouth. These scary-looking aliens may be a couple of hours from where she lived, at least, based on where they escaped from, but her mind already conjured up all kinds of ways they could commandeer a hovercraft, sowing mayhem and destruction behind them. Two hours away was too close for comfort and put them in the general area where she lived.

Chances were that they were headed towards Namkarfeh or one of the other worlds that still had contact with aliens and that she had nothing to worry about. If she were them, that's where she would be fleeing to. She just hoped they hadn't decided to remain in the sector and that she would never encounter such horrific creatures. She was armed and she was not afraid of living alone, but high up in the mountains where she lived, the fear of a lair invasion was ever present. At least she knew to shoot on sight. Several scenarios were running through her head as she left the merchant and in each one of them she expeditiously dispatched the aliens, even when they attacked first. She would be ready.


	19. The Escape

The day turned to dusk and then to night but there was no more rush across the channel. The number of women trickling onto the muddy strip dwindled as it became harder to see. T'Pol wordlessly handed Hoshi a muddied rucksack. The inside was still dry and clean. Hoshi picked up a grain cake, split it in half, handing one half to T'Pol, who accepted it. She always gave all the food to Hoshi and let her apportion it as she deemed fit. "We have three cakes left" Hoshi said. T'Pol nodded, silently computing the time of their next meal. Hoshi looked surreptitiously at the Vulcan, noting the overly thin arms. Hoshi looked at the half grain cake in her hand, considered breaking it further and giving an extra share to T'Pol, but knew the Commander would not accept it.

Hoshi fell asleep from exhaustion, cradled by the soft mud as on the past nights, and only woke up when the suns lit up the sky. She saw with relief that T'Pol was next to her, in her usual meditation pause. She had a feeling the Vulcan had not slept, would not sleep until the two of them were at a remove from danger. T'Pol heard her breathing change and opened her eyes. The sound of rumbling in the distant brought everyone on the strip to their feet. That meant more refugees would be streaming their way. The strip was already full of bodies, every square foot occupied. It would not take long before the mass of refugees, as if a collective with a common brain, would throw itself across the river in another desperate gamble at reaching safety or dying in the process.

T'Pol instinctively looked up at the sky. Now that they were out of the camps, away from the dampening baffles and almost out of the diamagnetic mud, Enterprise would have been able to read their biosigns. But Starfleet would never have let the ship orbit a planet for almost four months for a couple of officers. She knew Archer would come back looking for them at some point. Some point in the far future. She brought herself back to the present, motioning Hoshi to get up. The two of them edged around the Arumids pressing towards Namkarfeh, moving sideways along the women that eyed them angrily whenever they brushed by them, until they were practically standing in the water on the outer edge of the muddy strip.

All of sudden the crowd surged forward, as if on an unspoken signal. T'Pol grabbed Hoshi by the arm and moved along with them, but sideways. Bending low to avoid being noticed in the general confusion, they started at a brisk pace upstream, staying within the shallows by the channel. There was a bend in the river a hundred and fifty yards away beyond which it was impossible to tell where the water came from. Behind them, they heard the screams of those felled by bullets and the roar of the rushers. They started running as the reports of the guns became sparser, then they were at the bend, and then around the bend, hidden by the natural slope of the terrain. T'Pol motioned Hoshi to stay close to the ground as they kept walking. Hoshi was trying to regain her breath, her diaphragm compressed by the position. She knew T'Pol wouldn't stop. Their common survival vastly outweighed any temporary physical discomfort.

xx

Admiral Duprovski had been waiting anxiously for the call. He pounced on the videoscreen as soon as the incoming signal lit up, hoping for good news. The Verkael representative to the Overarching Council materialized on the screen, and as usual he damned his inability to read the Dalgort features in any meaningful way.

"Councilmember" he saluted her, hiding his crossed fingers under his desk.

The Verkael eye him fixedly, her yellow mane slightly raised "Admiral" she articulated back in her sibilant way. She lowered her eyes as if reading from a statement then looked straight through the screen at him. "We were unable to locate your officers."

Duprovski's smoothed his features, careful not to let the upset show in his voice. "What happened, I thought you had them in your sensors?!" He knew he should not have trusted the Verkaels, should not have trusted anyone on that damned planet and should have brought back Archer on the double or any other NC-class starship to handle things. These, these… idiots… had blown it, unable to see through their narrow racial prejudices and give the situation the care it deserved. He just knew it.

The representative blinked hard at the screen. He hoped she hadn't been talking, because he had been paying no attention. But no, it looked like she hadn't started explaining yet. "We did, for a short time. But then we lost them. You are aware of the diamagnetic characteristics of the range."

Duprovski nodded. He was well aware of the fact they couldn't locate a needle in the entire area. Starfleet had been trying ever since the officers had disappeared. Duprovski wondered what had not gone according to plan. Why couldn't the Verkaels track the officers? Were they stranded on Namkarfeh now? The Verkael representative remained silent. Duprovski decided to give her a hand. "You were not able to pick up their biosigns?" he asked.

The representative's mane went up in shock. "No, not at all" she replied, then fell silent again, seemingly embarrassed. This time Duprovski was nonplussed. He raised his eyebrows in a questioning stare "Then what happened?"

Once again she adopted that straight in your eyes look that he was starting to associate with bad news. "The Namkarfehs decided to treat the Arumids like an invading army."

Duprovski froze, then narrowed his eyes at his counterpart "What are you trying to tell me?"

"The Namkarfehs starting firing at the Arumids as they tried to enter their territory. We lost track of your officers during one of the attacks."

Duprovski felt like someone had just hit him in the chest with a barbell. The Verkaels had been trying to save the Arumids and now this? And his officers innocent victims of some internecine skirmish? He was a Starfleet admiral, he forced himself to regain control of his senses. "Are they dead?" his voice sounded like it was coming from far away. To be so close as to almost have touched them, and then to lose them so quickly…

The Verkael representative became slightly agitated "We do not know, Admiral. We had people on Namkarfeh ready to extract your officers as soon as they crossed over. My government and the Overarching Council talked to the Namkarfehs about stopping the killing. We were successful but we had already lost their sensor readings." She again looked straight at him, in a way that he was starting to find disquieting "We did not find their bodies among those that were killed, but we were not able to retrieve all the dead. Based on what you told us about your officers, there is a possibility they're still alive. We are exploring all options."

Duprovski had given enough 'but there's still a chance' pep talks to know that this was nothing but wishful thinking. He mentally reset the clock to six weeks in his head. In six weeks, he would have to declare the missing officers dead. Again.

And still he clung to the whisper of a hope that they would find them. And he didn't mean just their bodies. "How can we help?" his voice was strangely raspy.

The Verkael representative seemed to fidget "There is nothing for Starfleet to do quite yet. Our people on Namkarfeh will keep monitoring all arrivals from Nint and reporting on any findings. We have also dispatched our field agents on Nint to cover the surrounding area in the Barest'ig range. In case they went back."

Duprovski snorted, then checked himself, eyeing the representative with narrowed eyes without seeing her. What better hiding place than those darn mountains, one big dampening ground, two science officers who would know about it. She might be onto something…

xx

T'Pol and Hoshi had been walking for hours, stopping for a break only when they realized they could no longer hear the rumbling of the planes or the report of the guns, just the profound silence of the hills around them. The river deepened as its bed narrowed and vegetation started appearing on its banks. The water was now sloshing north of their knees, and a shallow current traced eddies in its center. T'Pol kept going until the water reached their waist, and then at a break in the vegetation threw the rucksack they had left up the bank. She immersed herself completely in the water, followed by Hoshi, and the two of them let the ever-present mud dissolve in the clear water until no traces remained. Then T'Pol hauled herself up the bank, pulling Hoshi up after her.

They were dripping wet, but they were clean. And there was enough light left in the sky that the suns would dry them off. Their shaved heads and the tunics they wore were a dead giveaway and they were far from being safe but for the first time in over four months, they were free. Hoshi sat heavily on the grass lining the bank, overcome by the realization. The glow of hope was spreading over the horizon. She felt a physical sense of lightness, as if a yoke had indeed been removed.

All of a sudden a thought made her heart constrict. "Do you think they are monitoring for bio-signs" she whispered at T'Pol, remembering how they had been taken into captivity.

T'Pol was scanning the horizon, trying to look through the thickets now lining the river for any sign of civilization. "I don't know the impact of the diamagnetic minerals on their sensors but it would be a waste of energy to scan randomly away from settlements." She looked up at the suns "The suns will set in a couple of hours. I will explore our surroundings until nightfall."

"I will go with you" Hoshi replied. T'Pol looked at her, was going to interject that it would be better if she stayed put, hidden by the vegetation, then remembered that this was how they had been captured in the first place. She nodded. "As you wish."


	20. Enodreiwn

When night fell, T'Pol and Hoshi emerged from the thickets onto the road they had noted earlier, tearing clothes and flesh anew on the wild bushes' thorny barbs. On the other side of the road, perfectly aligned rows of vegetables revealed the presence of farm exploitations. This meant they were both relatively safe, far enough from a population center that monitoring would be overly cumbersome, and relatively unsafe, with the always present risk of people going by. They started walking along the road, keeping close to the embankment so that they could jump back into the thickets at the first sign of someone coming by.

Hoshi had taken the lead in their night walk, she knew Vulcans didn't do too well with night vision. In the moonless night it was almost impossible to see where they were going and she was guided by the sound of their feet meeting the pavement and the slightly darker shade of the road. At least the hovercrafts did not fly at night and they were safe from sensors.

She had no idea how far they had traveled, between the desperate flight to the mud flats and coming back up the river. Depending on topography, they may be very close to the camps, or they may be in a different area altogether. T'Pol would know exactly, to the inch probably, but she wasn't keen on finding out. A feeling of panic threatened to rise in her whenever she thought that the camps might be close by.

The road suddenly banked sharply to the left, away from the shiny ribbon of the river, before rising up a hillock. The shape of a few houses could be guessed at in the distance against the paler dark of the sky and Hoshi froze. Houses meant people meant danger. T'Pol almost collided with her, narrowly side-stepping just as she felt the heat of Hoshi's body come against her. "Houses" Hoshi whispered. "There may be people there."

T'Pol didn't say anything, considering. They had almost finished the meager contents of the rucksack when they came out of the river. Houses meant the danger of people but it also meant the possibility of food, and food was a priority given Hoshi's condition. "Let's keep going" she whispered back. "There may be an isolated house not far away." They kept walking, melding into the shadows, under cover of the stillness of the night and always on the lookout for anything unexpected. Finally there were no more houses to be seen on either side of the road. The road had flattened for a while but soon started climbing up another steep hill and the women had a choice to make. Stay with the road and move away from the river or choose the river, which they could see twisting away down from them.

"There will be more people by the river" Hoshi told T'Pol, remembering summers spent at her grandparents' house in the country. Water drew animals and people like moths to a flame. She knew T'Pol would not be aware of that fact since loose bodies of water tended to repel Vulcans, whose bone density made swimming an extravagant waste of energy, at best.

That only left one choice, and the women proceeded up the hill. Soon they could see down the slope the softer blacks of the roofs of the houses they had walked past, close enough that food foraging forays were still possible. From there they could also see the river, and banking left to meet it, the darker sheen of the road against it.

When they reached the top of the hill they could see the shadow of an even more massive hill and they realized they were at the foot of the mountain. Hoshi stopped, looking around. There was an old path mostly made of potholes that bisected the road before circling around the side of the hill and disappearing behind it. She motioned to T'Pol and proceeded down the path. With some luck they would find an abandoned house there, or an old shed in which to rest.

xxx

Enodreiw'n flicked off the litorb with an angry twist of her hand. The news were always the same, dark and full of would-be threats to the Greater Kingdom of Nint. First the aliens, now the Arumids. The latest communiqués talked about attacks by the Arumids in the delta region and the Arumids trying to flee to Namkarfeh, unsuccessfully. Conveniently right around the time when the Overarching Council had decided to look harder into the treatment of the Arumids. She felt like finding a way to get on one of the official channels and scream the truth she knew. That she lived within a twenty mile radius from places by the delta where people were forbidden to go and that she had not seen the tip of the wing of an Arumid plane fly overhead. And they would have had to fly overhead in order to swoop in on the delta.

Still, she couldn't regret that they were finally getting rid of the Arumids. She had no love for them and they deserved what had happened to them, in broad strokes. Always ready to lie and steal. She knew that on an individual basis there were most likely good ones and bad ones but she could not afford the luxury of parsing them out. She had heard there were a few Arumids who had been hidden by more enlightened souls. Good for them, but she was not one of those weak souls.

Her thoughts went back to the forbidden places by the mouth of the river. While she had a plunging view of the village hanging below her on the flank of the mountain and the river from where her homestead was, the delta was hidden from sight by the tall hills of the canyons. Everyone in the area knew to avoid the area downstream, and people would make hour-long detours just so they would not have to hovercraft by there. Nobody quite knew what was hiding there but there was a universal truth when it came to the government, the less questions asked the better.

She wondered again why the government claimed the Arumids were attacking the delta. Unless that was an excuse to turn around and destroy the Arumids. She hoped not. It was one thing to want them gone, it was another thing entirely to actively make it so. She would not feel right if she learned her government was party to a massacre. Not that she could do much about it. But still, that was not right. Even if it was the Namkarfehs and not the Nints doing the killing. Though to think about it, that was another convenient coincidence. She was starting to doubt what the official channels were claiming.

She needed to go outside and start the morning chores. She looked around the central chamber and the piles of cushions strewn about for visitors and friends. The place had not changed since her mate died, taken too early by disease. There were few friends and fewer visitors these days, she knew she was considered to be weird, refusing to participate in the frenzy of blame that had seized the country these past twenty years. Her son had left to become a guard, like all the young men in the country, or most of them, it seemed, and they would no longer talk. Perhaps one day the craziness would stop and he would come back to his senses and perhaps they would talk again. She hoped he hadn't done anything she could never forgive him for.

But because she was no longer young, and lived alone far from the rest of the community, nobody had taken her to task for not being rabidly committed to the government's new course of action. She kept to herself and her neighbors kept to themselves, that seemed to be the understanding they had reached. She preferred it that way.

xxx

Archer looked at the working of the muscles in Lieutenant Reed's jaw, wondering if it had been wise or proper to share what Dubrovski had told him. Perhaps he had spilled the beans only to share the misery. But he was fit to be tied, Starfleet was fit to be tied, and it seemed unfair to let Reed in the dark. He wondered if the Englishman was having an issue with the substance of what he had told him or with the fact he had broken protocol by taking him in his confidence. It was always a tightrope act with Reed as to which side of the regulation he was going to fall on, though usually it was the side of the book.

"Bloody hell!" his Tactical Officer sprung up, started pacing up and down the private dining room. Archer figured his issue was with the substance of what he had been told. He waited carefully to see how angry he would become. But Malcolm was too shaken by what he had just heard to think about taking it out on anyone.

"This whole time, I've been trying to get my head around the fact Hoshi might be dead, trying to keep a stiff upper lip through it, even though I was hoping…" Malcolm brushed tears out of his eyes. He didn't care if Archer saw. "And now you tell me she was alive, all the way until a couple of days ago, but now they've lost her again!" He turned on his heel, barreled down the room again. "And…And she's on some kind of hit list from the Nints?! This is nuts!"

Archer had to agree, it was nuts for him too. He thought it was nuts for Duprovski also. The Admiral had looked slightly shell-shocked when he had called him a little earlier, to relate that the Verkaels had actually had the vitals of T'Pol and Hoshi in their sensors, ready to somehow get them back, and lost them. That was upsetting enough. That was before Duprovski dropped the other shoe. That the Verkael representative had reached out to him the next morning to let him know about a newsflash they had intercepted from Nint, talking about T'Pol and Hoshi as dangerous fugitives that needed to be shot on sight.

The Verkaels were raising hell with the Overarching Council – well, Starfleet was raising hell through the Verkaels – asking that the communiqué be brought down right away and firing pointed questions at the Nint representative about his government's constant denial that they harbored the missing officers. If the word harbored could even be used. It was now obvious that the Nints had been lying the whole time and had somehow gotten the Namkarfehs to do their dirty business for them, making them the 'bad' ones while the Nints couldn't be blamed for anything.

And here he was, five weeks away from Dalgort, four weeks at top speed, while his officers were being hunted by the Nints and the Verkaels, their ongoing survival pretty much dependent on who got to them first. And there was nothing he or Starfleet or anyone could do about it.

Which was pretty much the conclusion Lieutenant Reed had reached himself, based on his sudden dropping into a chair, head in both hands. Archer shared the feeling. The one speck of good news in this whole sorry mess was that everyone took the litnews as a sign the officers were still alive, in spite of the Nints' vehement assertion that they didn't know if they were. He just hoped T'Pol and Hoshi were well hidden, and would remain so until Starfleet knocked on their door.

xxx

Enodreiwn saw that something had triggered the security cameras monitoring the outside of her house into alert mode. She reviewed the littrack from the night but the litvid was too fuzzy for her to see anything. Someone or something had breached the perimeter. She grabbed the gun she kept by the front passageway, quickly armed it and went outside.

She slowly and silently paced around the compound, but there were no signs of intrusion. Whoever had come was not in a vehicle. Nobody would come on foot from the village, her house was too far away from the beaten paths. Could this be a marauder? Those were unheard of, the new regime kept everyone under strict curfew and those without a fixed abode were shepherded into communal camps. She did not know what these were for. The regime had a folly of camp construction.

She cocked her gun, holding it high enough to shoot anyone right in the chest. She saw that the door to the back shed was almost closed, when she usually left if ajar. Whoever it was, was hiding in the back shed. There was nothing there to be stolen unless the thief or thieves were looking for cleaning powder. They would have to come out and they would aim for the main house, where there were things to be stolen. And she would be waiting for them. She retreated to the nearest tree. She had a perfect line of sight to the door but whoever it was wouldn't see her until after they came out. She waited.

An hour later, she found the waiting to be vexing. Had they seen her before she saw them and they were hunkered down waiting for her to leave? She had thoughts of kicking the door open and letting them know making her wait was rude. But how many were there? What if they could overpower her, even with the gun? She realized she was at a standstill. She hated standstills.

She started for the shed. She had the gun and the element of surprise, and she was going to shoot first.


	21. Into Hiding (Again)

The door burst into splinters under Enodreiwn's kick and she barged into the shed, gun at the ready. She stopped in astonished surprise. A voice in her head screamed ' _These are the aliens_!' One was sleeping, the other sitting cross-legged. The sitting one looked up the barrel of the gun "We apologize, my friend needed to rest. We will leave now." She calmly got up.

In spite of all her careful rehearsals of how she would shoot first if she ever met them, Enodreiwn froze. She had never imagined that they would be quietly resting and she would be the one dropping in on them. And they didn't look dangerous, even if they were horrible to look at. Good thing her government had decided to avoid aliens altogether.

She cocked the gun and the alien who had spoken stepped in front of the sleeping one ahead of the gun firing off. Enodreiwn was shocked by the protective gesture that was so incredibly Dalgort-like. But these were aliens, it must just be a coincidence. She hesitated. The act of protectiveness resonated with her in ways she couldn't explain. In spite of the government's admonition to shoot first, it just didn't seem right. The alien who had spoken raised its hands "Please let us go, we will leave peacefully." Enodreiwn realized the sleeping one was not fat but pregnant. The other one must be her mate. She did another double-take as she looked more calmly at the other one. That was a female too. She lowered her gun, found her voice "Who are you?"

"I am T'Pol of Vulcan and my friend is Hoshi of Earth. We just ask that you let us go." the alien replied.

"Go where?" Enodreiwn asked.

"We are looking to go to Verkael" the alien answered.

Verkael? One didn't just go there like that. "Verkael?" she repeated out loud.

"We are Starfleet officers. Verkael is in contact with Starfleet."

Enodreiwn's shock kept increasing. Officers were feared and respected. How could aliens be officers. "You escaped from jail" she said accusingly.

The thinner alien raised an eyebrow "We did not escape from jail. We were held against our will in one of the camps at the foot of the mountains." Enodreiwn's head swam. Was that what was going on in the delta, that had so carefully been hidden? More camps?

"But she's pregnant" she said, pointing with her chin at the sleeping alien. She wasn't sure why it was relevant except that pregnant women were not incarcerated. That, she knew.

The thin one looked at her as if she could read her every thought. "It was a breeding camp." She said softly. "The child she is carrying is a Nint."

Enodreiwn recoiled in horror. But this was an alien. How could the child be a Nint? They must be lying. They had to be.

Her eyes fell on the unused gun in her hands. It was difficult to kill someone who acted almost like a Dalgort, and she couldn't kill the other one if she was carrying a Nint. They were saying they didn't escape from a high-level security prison but from a camp. A camp that was in the delta. The delta that the Arumids were attacking. They were not Arumids but they said that they were officers. And they were not going to Namkarfeh but to Verkael. None of it made any sense.

She noted that both aliens wore the flimsiest tunics which were not appropriate for the weather up in the higher hills. She knew this was not prison garb. The story about the camp may not be a lie. And one of them was pregnant. Which the litnews had not said. But she knew her own two eyes were telling the truth. It was just too complicated.

Enodreiwn was a mountain Nint, and mountain Nints liked to do things in their own way. The aliens didn't worry her. The pregnant one might be telling the truth and carrying a Nint or she might be carrying an alien, but in any case she wouldn't be dangerous. Enodreiwn could break the thin one like a twig if she needed to. If all they wanted was a place to rest and sleep, they could stay in the shed, plenty of animals had done the same before them.

It was better not to get involved with the government. Especially more than one government. She would check the litweb for more information and she could always call the guards afterwards, depending on what she found. If she ended up having to, she would claim that she had been unaware of the litnews about the aliens.

"You can stay here" she heard herself say. She mentally kicked herself for not having added "till morning". She'd tell them to leave in the morning. She pointed to the basket-like contraption where she threw all the clothes that were unwearable, to use on the compound. "You'll find warmer clothes in there."

She backed out of the shed, gun still in hand, not taking any chances they'd jump her when her back was turned. She sighed when she stepped backwards through the destroyed door. She should have remembered the door was ancient, now she would have to get a new one.

xx

Phlox was resting on his bunk in his assigned cabin. He instinctively opened his eyes when he heard the chime of the incoming Starfleet transmission. He quickly opened his inbox, scanning the top incoming message from Archer. "I don't know that I can say sightings were confirmed but not successful." Phlox read the message twice, nodding as the meaning affirmed itself in his mind. So Starfleet had been unsuccessful in negotiation the release of T'Pol and Hoshi.

He couldn't wait any longer. They were not in an isolated a corner of space like when he had left Enterprise. It was time to cash in on some of the chits he had out there. He typed a broadcast message and then waited.

It didn't even take an hour before a dozen beeps rang in unison, one of which was particularly meaningful. A Denobulan warp-capable shuttle could meet with the freighter in two days and get him to Dalgort a mere five days after that, two weeks ahead of schedule. Phlox had accepted the offer before he had even finished reading the message.

xx

Enodreiwn blinked as she stepped out, the suns were already high in the sky. She had slept fitfully, half her night preoccupied by nightmares of aliens coming after her. Each time she'd wake up, check that there was no sound in the house, and make herself settle and go back to sleep.

As she stepped out of her lair, part of her hoped that the aliens had left and that the shed was empty, as when some randomly wild animal decided to occupy the space for a while. She avoided looking towards the shed. Perhaps if she didn't look, she would be happily surprised to find them gone.

She proceeded with her usual morning chores and got so caught up in what she was doing that she completely forgot about the aliens until she noticed the broken door and remembered in a flash the events of the day before. She caught a glimpse of the aliens inside. They hadn't left.

That distressed her. If they had left, she could forget about the whole thing and life could go back to normal. Now she had to worry about what they could do and she had to worry about the government finding out. Something just wasn't right. She had been unable to get any more information about the aliens. The litnews had completely disappeared from the litorb, she couldn't find it on the litweb, not even in the archives. It was as if it had never been there. But she could still remember when she had first seen it at the merchant, if only because it had so upset her. All of this was entirely too suspicious. She had thought about telling the aliens to leave, but the next Nint who found them might kill them first, not knowing about the baby Nint or about the Dalgort-like protectiveness. She couldn't risk letting that happen. Not when she could prevent it. And she would be too sad if ithappened. She walked back to her lair, heavy-footed with the worry of what exactly she had done and how to undo it. As usual, she hadn't thought too well through the consequences of her decision.

As she prepared the first of her five daily meals she noticed the grain cakes had gone stale. She unwrapped a new supply, thought about the thin alien. She had given them shelter, she was certainly not going to give them food also.

She hesitated, hand hovering over the disposal unit. This was not giving them food, this was avoiding using the disposal unit, a waste of energy. She walked outside, resolutely strode to the shed, making sure to make plenty of noise along the way. She kept herself from knocking on what was left of the door, even though she really wanted to. But this was her lair, her domain, and they needed to know it.

The aliens were awake. She saw the thin one carefully looking at her hands for the gun that wasn't there. Enodreiwn suddenly felt foolish. She was not a monster. At the same time she reasoned it was ok if they thought she was. Better have them be afraid of her than the opposite. She half-handed, half-threw the bag of stale grain cakes to the thin one. "I thought perhaps you could use these" she said, once again uncomfortably feeling that these watchful eyes knew her very thoughts. She felt her mane start rising in embarrassment and left promptly before they could notice.

xx

The tall Nint man looked over the litmap flashing on the inside of his single-person hovercraft, darkening the areas he had already checked with a swift swipe of his thumb. The area the aliens could have escaped to was not that large. Of course, it would take time to check and re-check all potential hiding places, but they had done it for the Arumids and they could do it again for the aliens.

His team had divided the area into checkered zones that could each be gone through by a single agent in a single day. He was on his fifth zone, methodically going up this flank of the mountain. His colleagues were doing the same on the other hills. Eventually they would find the aliens, it was just a question of time.

He turned the hovercraft on, let it lift silently off the ground, adjusting the visor panel. The sun would set soon, it was time to go back home. The craft gained a little bit more height, and then zoomed away.

A couple of minutes later, another hovercraft lifted and took off after the first one. It would remain hidden until the occupants could check that the Nint was going home after the day's work. Tomorrow, they would be waiting for him at the usual crosslane not far from his lair, ready to shadow his every move. If he found the aliens, they would be right behind.


	22. Toxicity

"So what do we do?"

It had been a couple of days since they had taken refuge in the shed. Hoshi had been asleep when T'Pol had first met the Nint female who lived alone in the main building and all she knew was that she had agreed to let them stay. She had been giving them a little bit of food, usually stale or compromised, but beggars were not choosers. Hoshi had sorted through the old clothes the Nint female had said they could use, giving the warmer ones to T'Pol. The Nints' elongated torsos and bowed legs led to shirts that never ended and pants that were too short. They wouldn't win a fashion prize but they were not cold. At least she wasn't. Whatever they couldn't wear provided the slimmest barrier against the cold hardness of the stone, for there were no beds. It was neither comfortable nor even acceptable but it was better than nothing.

Her question to T'Pol was what to do next. Should they stay where they were, without electricity or water other than the cold water in the reserve tanks, nor real protection from the cold, but a safe place of sorts, or should they try and go somewhere else, somewhere that would bring them closer to Verkael. "We need to find out more about getting to Verkael." T'Pol replied. Hoshi really didn't see how they could achieve that.

She went back to checking the latest food that the Nint female had brought. At some point they needed to find out her name. The Nints seemed to have nutritional requirements that were not wildly out of the range of normal for humanoids. She eyed the broad leaf green and orange vegetables that the Nint had given them. They had seen better days, partially wilted and yellowing.

"Do you want to try those?" she asked T'Pol. The Vulcan hesitated, looking at the greens as if they were potential enemies. "Perhaps if I find a way to cook them" Hoshi persisted. Their reserve of grain cakes was dwindling, but as old and stale as they were, they were the only food that T'Pol could consume without getting sick. Everything else seemed to be at least mildly toxic to Vulcans. Back in the Nint camp, the food was exactly calibrated to sustain each inmate's personal metabolic profile and the Nints must have filtered out whatever compounds were intolerable to Vulcan physiology. Hoshi was getting worried that T'Pol would eventually develop an adverse reaction to these grain cakes also and wondering how long the Commander could survive exclusively on them anyway.

T'Pol eyed the vegetables dubiously. It was true that cooking would destroy certain toxins but they had no idea what in the Nint foods made them toxic to Vulcans and no way to find out. She was still reeling from the last trial and not keen on a repeat. "You need the nutrients more" she told Hoshi.

"Hogwash" Hoshi noted the surprised eyebrow. "I may be pregnant but we both need to eat. It won't be much help if you end up with scurvy."

"Vulcans do not _"

"You know what I mean!" Hoshi cut her off irritably, aware that her irritation was prompted at least in part by fear. There had to be something on this planet that Vulcans could eat.

T'Pol sighed. "I will try again tomorrow. Eventually, we may be able to find another food group that I am able to process" she placated the ensign.

"So, what do we do?" Hoshi asked again, not so rhetorically.

Her CO reflected for a while, then spoke in measured tones "We are at a place of relative safety, which allows us to concentrate on finding a way out of Nint. As the Nint female gets more comfortable with us, I may eventually be able to access the central processing unit in the main building, which will provide information on the area where we are and how we can find our way to Verkael. There is not much we can do until then."

Hoshi nodded. It was true that comparatively speaking their current situation was infinitely preferable to being in the camp. And so far was that the sensors were not able to pick up their biosigns, or they would have been found already. She just hoped it stayed that way.

xx

Enodreiwn sighed when she heard the engine sputter but refuse to start. Just her luck. She needed to be in town for her appointment and now was not the time for the hovercraft to grow temperamental.

"Perhaps I can help you."

She almost jumped out of her skin. Damn that alien, scaring her like that. The alien seemed to notice, quietly said "I didn't mean to startle you." Once again Enodreiwn was shocked by the similarity between how these aliens behaved and Dalgort behaviors. She was certain it was a coincidence, another case of ascribing to them feelings they didn't have.

In the meantime, she needed to get to town and any help would be welcome. She exited the hovercraft so the alien could get in. The woman quickly tested every dial and litpin there was, before focusing on one of the gauges, seeming to listen to the engine as it tried to cough itself to life. She got out of the hovercraft, opened the side panel. Enodreiwn saw her unhook a couple of lines, wipe the open sockets, and put everything back in place. Then she went back in the hovercraft and the engine purred to a start on the first try. The alien stepped out again just as Enodreiwn was recriminating herself for having handed her the keys to an escape vehicle. She was too stressed, too late, too worried to say anything to the thin alien whose name she did not know.

Back at the compound, she went in search of the aliens for the first time since she had found them. They still slept in the shed, like wild animals. She guessed the lack of water or light or even couches didn't bother them. They had been there a few nights now, and she regularly brought them what she wouldn't eat, though she had started including extras that she would otherwise have kept for another day. She had always been a soft touch. In exchange, the aliens found ways to be helpful, taking care of many chores and bringing the compound back to the shape it was in before her mate died.

Enodreiwn noticed the shed door had been repaired, which she hadn't seen before. She was struck when she stepped in by how neat the shed was and by the neatly folded pieces of fabric that created a cushion of sorts for the women. She suddenly realized these were far from animals and became embarrassed by the rudimentary lodging. Her generosity didn't look so generous anymore. Once again she felt her mane slightly rising in embarrassment before the watchful gaze of the thin one. She brusquely handed her the bag of fresh food she was carrying, a note of thanks as much as a peace offering.

"Thank you" the pregnant one said. Enodreiwn couldn't hide the shock that lifted her mane. She had spoken perfectly accented Nint. This was simply getting to be too much for her. "What's your name" she gruffly asked, in a gambit to seem uncaring and unmoved. "I am Hoshi" the pregnant one replied. Enodreiwn nodded "Aw-shee", drawing a smile from the alien. She turned to the thin one "And you?" "T'Pol" came the reply. Enodreiwn nodded again "Aw-shee, Tee-paw". Weird names, but then they were aliens.

"What's your name?" the one named Aw-shee asked. Enodreiwn articulated it carefully, drawing out the final yowl so they could clearly ear it.

"Enodrehiyown?" Aw-shee repeated. Enodreiwn thought that was close enough that it would do. She nodded. She was staring at them and they were staring back at her, and Enodreiwn just knew that this time she was going to ask about where they came from and what had happened.

xx

"What did you say?"

Phlox was staring disbelievingly at the Verkael who had picked him up from the spaceport. It was the same doctor who had contacted him shortly after he delivered his report to the Overarching Council, asking if he would be willing to help set up a planet-based medical exchange center, under the direction of the Overarching Council. The state of racial relations on Dalgort was such that the various worlds did not cooperate on medical development, a waste of learning and resources that could have dire consequences for all. Phlox had not considered accepting the offer, but then months started to pass by, T'Pol and Hoshi were still missing, Starfleet had sent Enterprise to the emptiest corner of space, when they all wanted to stay right by Dalgort where their friends were and setting up the medical exchange provided him with the excuse he needed to be where he wanted to be.

The doctor seemed to be truly regretful. "Only about half of the population of Arumid women remains. The others succumbed to the Namkarfeh's defense units."

"But that's a genocide!" Phlox was thinking furiously fast. Half of the women remaining was going to have a deleterious effect on generations to come. The Verkael doctor's yellow mane rose in embarrassment. "The Council was able to make the Namkarfehs reconsider and provide safe passage to the remaining Arumid women. They're resettling over in Namkarfeh. The Nint settlements have been almost entirely abandoned."

"And the men?" Phlox asked, thinking about the Arumids who attacked them down on Nint. The doctor shrugged. "We haven't been able to locate the men yet. We believe the Nints are holding them and the Council is in negotiations."

Phlox snorted. They were negotiating with the devil. "What is there to negotiate about?" he asked.

The doctor looked pained. "The Nints indicated that if they find any Arumid men, they are willing to release them provided there are no sanctions and the entire incident is filed."

Phlox was thrown. He looked at the doctor, aghast, thankful that he had become a doctor and not a diplomat. "They wouldn't, would they?" he asked softly. The doctor confirmed the answer when he shrugged again. "In the end, it might be better to get the Arumids out than to worry about blame." Phlox sighed. The Nints were underhanded bastards.

He remembered there was something he had been meaning to ask "Why were the Namkarfehs firing on the Arumids? I thought they were friendly."

The Verkael doctor simply eyed him silently. When the silence grow uncomfortable, he blinked, seeming to listen to some inner voice. "Many of the Arumids were pregnant with Nint babies. The Nints have found a way to overwrite the genetic code of the host."

Phlox froze, looking up in surprise at the doctor. Why would the Nints do that? It was not like they needed to replenish the population. A sudden insights made him narrow his eyes at the Verkael "If the Arumids are pregnant with Nint children, that's going to entirely erase at least a year of age cohorts, perhaps two…" That was ethnic cleansing. The Nints had been trying to eradicate the Arumids.

The Verkael doctor grew animated with distaste. "We are hosting a couple of Arumid women who are pregnant and willing to talk. The other ones are pretending nothing is wrong, won't talk to any doctors. Part of the arrangement with the Namkarfehs is that the children will be adopted back on Nint when they are born."

Phlox was thrown. The Namkarfehs were firing on the Arumids because they carried Nint babie, that were going to be shipped back like so many unwanted curs, all this under the watchful eyes of the Verkaels. And he was supposed to set up a medical exchange program between all of them?

The Verkael doctor looked at him "Examining these women and figuring out what happened will be your first mission."

Phlox sighed again. This was not going according to plan.

xx

Hoshi straightened from where she was been collecting the tall weeds, holding the small of her back, stretching away from the cumbersome weight of her belly. Between fleeing from the camp, escaping to the hills, and settling in, after a manner of speaking, with Enodreiwn, she had pretty much forgotten about the pregnancy for a while. Now that they were free, she found that her mental health had much improved. Yes, this was an awful thing that happened and she didn't want any part of it, but eventually it would be over. She felt towards the baby as she would towards any alien lifeform that was an unwelcome presence on Enterprise. Wait until they left, on their own accord or with assistance. She was already halfway along. A few more months and with or without Phlox, the Nint would be born and she could leave it behind with its own. Her mind mused to whether Enodreiwn could be a potential caretaker.

In the meantime, the compound was starting to look neat and orderly, courtesy of her and T'Pol's attention. It was hard to believe that they had only been at Enodreiwn's for a little over a week. The first few days of distrust and tension had given way to a more comfortable exchange, once Enodreiwn had gotten over the shock and disbelief of what her government had done. She was trying to compensate as she could, within the limits of her newfound generosity. She had them move to the basement of the main building, where there was at least light and water, and which was not as cold. She shared some of the five meals with them and they had found one more food that was not toxic to Vulcans.

She smiled as she thought of T'Pol. Their hair was growing back and Hoshi was discovering that Vulcan hair grew out at the straightest angle, making the Commander look like a days-old fledgling. Hoshi made sure to crack a grin about it only when the Commander couldn't see her. She didn't really want to explain what she was finding so funny. That was not very often, actually, as it felt more and more like the Commander was keeping an eagle-eye on her. She idly wondered why that was.

She suddenly heard the whizzing of a hovercraft engine, so unexpected because nobody ever came to these parts. She hurried back to the shed, looking anxiously at the sky, worried that she would be spotted, warning T'Pol as she trotted awkwardly through the compound. The Vulcan reached the shed almost at the same time she did, carefully propping the door shut behind them.

xx

The Nint man narrowed his eyes at the visor panel, his mane rising slightly in tense expectation. There had been a fleeting life sign across the upper right edge of the visor panel, he was certain of it. Something that was neither Nint nor animal. He carefully noted the zone number and the time on his litpadd. The compound would be aware that the hovercraft was approaching, he would have to keep with his cover story while scanning surreptitiously for alien lifeforms. He could feel the thrill of the ancient hunting instinct in him. He knew his quarry was near.


	23. The Nint Man

The hovercraft landed on the visitor pad and Enoikoawn got out, waiting. He knew that the occupants of the lair would soon come out, gun in hand, to check him out. His mane raised slightly when Enodreiwn walked out. It was unexpected to find a woman living alone high in the hills. This one must not be afraid of much. Not even of aliens. He examined her carefully as she made her way to the hovercraft, looking at the way she moved, trying to deduce based on body language if she would be friend or foe. One never knew, and one had to be extremely careful in how one phrased one's thoughts.

He greeted her with a teeth-baring smile, trying to show he was not dangerous and defuse any hostility. "Greetings, milady. I am a representative of the Delta Sector Commission and we are doing a live survey of the area, to find out if you were impacted by the hostilities."

The glare he got in return would have skinned a shier Nint, and Enoikoawn smiled inwardly. This one was friend. She didn't know it yet, but they would be working together one day. He engaged in the customary platitudes while his ears were sorting through the sounds of the compound, trying to discern if he could hear the noise of aliens, and his nose was tasting the air, looking for offworld scents. He quickly made a mental inventory of all the structures on the compound, enough to hide more than a couple of aliens. Then after fifteen minutes of inane back and forth, he took his leave and took off.

xx

Captain Archer slammed the videoscreen shut. He had been happy to see Phlox's face appear on the screen until the doctor started talking. Now he was steaming.

"Archer to Reed."

"Lieutenant Reed" there was a question mark at the end, Reed was on the bridge, wondering why his captain would use the intercom when he was only a few feet away. He looked over the new communication officer, and found himself staring at the back of the crewman's neck. If it had been Hoshi, she would have turned around in her chair to look at him, providing some clue as to what the call had been about through her body language. He saw that Ensign Mayweather had turned towards their communication officer, too, then turned back as he realized this was not Hoshi. Malcolm frowned. Was there something developing between Travis and Hoshi? Perhaps he should be clearer in his intentions with her.

"Come to my ready room on the double." Archer snapped.

Malcolm found him staring straight ahead at the far wall of his ready room, scowling. "Sir?" he prompted. Archer peeled his gaze off, seemed to look through Reed rather than at him.

"I just go a communication from Phlox. It seems the Arumids disappeared because the Nint were rounding them up and holding them in some kind of containment camp." Reed nodded briskly. Bastard Nints. And the whole time they were clamoring they had nothing to do with it and didn't know what happened to the Arumids. Suddenly Malcolm put two and two together and looked at Archer with narrowed eyes "They think that's what happened to T'Pol and Hoshi?"

He knew from the last time Archer had spoken to him about it that the two officers' lifesigns had been spotted right before the Namkarfehs started shooting at the Arumids. It made sense they would have been held in the same camp as the Arumids. Malcolm felt the anger rise in him as the reality of the situation slowly dawned on him, Hoshi being held like a prisoner, and for months on end.

This time Archer looked straight into Reed's eyes "They believe these were breeding camps. The Nints found some kind of method to overwrite the genes of the women they held and make them produce Nint babies."

"…." Malcolm stared at Archer wordlessly, his brain had just hit a massive freeze.

Archer saw his officer's jaw go slack, knew that Reed's brain was trying very hard to connect dots it didn't want to connect. Hell, he had had the same reaction when Phlox had told him. It had taken five minutes of the doctor gently talking to him before he could even acknowledge what was going through his mind. He heard himself use Phlox's word to help Malcolm.

"We have no idea if that's what happened to T'Pol and Hoshi, but we have to proceed on the assumption it is. Starfleet and the Verkaels have committed all available resources to try and locate them. They are going as fast as they can."

Malcolm felt nauseated, his head was swimming and all he wanted to do was sit down. Or throw up. He retreated behind the perfectly proper English military persona that easily came to him in times of stress. "Will that be all, sir?"

Archer nodded. For once he saw through the rigid demeanor as a pale attempt to hide emotional turmoil. "That's not all, Malcolm." Archer got up, facing the porthole in his ready room, looking at the stars, wondering if that was the reason T'Pol and Hoshi went back into Nint territory. It was easier to say what he had to say without looking at Lieutenant Reed. "Phlox discovered a couple of flaws in the genetic manipulation methodology that the Nints used. One is that they thought the Nint offspring they created would have a trait that would make all their children Nint. That's not the case. The other" Archer sighed, turned back to face Reed, he felt like a coward otherwise "is that if, and I mean if, they did forcibly impregnate T'Pol and Hoshi, there are basic differences between Nint and other humanoids' biology that make it impossible for them to deliver these babies safely. They will die in the process."

Reed nodded, as stiffly as ever "I see, sir." Archer wished he could stop there. He held a hand up, motioning to Malcolm that there was more.

"The Nints have an accelerated gestation and development process compared to Humans or Vulcans. Phlox thinks delivery might be slightly delayed because of Human or Vulcan influences, even if the children are genetically Nint, but is following the Nint calendar to be safe. Their pregnancies only last six months. That is twenty-four weeks. They were captured almost nineteen weeks ago."

Archer looked straight at Reed as he delivered the final blow "We only have five weeks to find them. Or they'll die."

xx

Enoikoawn lowered his hovercraft to the ground, shutting the engine down and letting the vessel slide gracefully to a stop. He got out, checking that the craft could not be seen from the compound, and walked the longest half-circle he could back to the house, doing his best to meld with the surrounding trees and vegetation. As he came closer, he could see the lits had been turned on. They would be settling down for the fourth meal. He kept walking until his hand was on the front panel, ready to push his way in and surprise whoever was inside.

Which is exactly what he did.

He was not disappointed. Enodreiwn was there, but so were two others. He recognized at a glance these were the aliens everyone was looking for. They all froze looking at him.

Enoikoawn saw from the corner of his eye the thinner of the two aliens get up and knew he was going to be attacked. He quickly raised both hands up, partly to cover himself and partly as an entreaty. "I am not armed. I am not a danger to you."

The thinner alien stopped mid-motion, looked over the other two as if considering how she was going to put an end to this. Enoikoawn went on quickly before she could come to a decision. "My name is Enoikoawn, I am a Nint but I am here on request of the Verkaels. We've been looking all over for you."

The statement was followed by a general sense of confusion as Enodreiwn's face reflected the stupor she felt, the two aliens tried to fully digest what he had just said, and he felt a general sense of relief that nobody had attacked him yet.

He pulled a low-lying stool and sat down without asking. He was getting too old for this kind of stress.

"Why should we believe you?" the taller alien asked. He was not surprised that she was going to be the harder one to convince. The alphas always were.

"I certainly understand why you wouldn't" he replied. "What my people have done is very wrong. That is why I chose to help the Verkaels. Our government didn't use to be like that" he pointed his chin at Enodreiwn "she can tell you, we both grew up around the same time."

"How did you find us?" again, that was the taller alien.

"We thought you would cross over to Namkarfeh and we would extract you then. We didn't know they were going to start shooting. When we couldn't find you, we assumed you were dead. But then a couple of Arumids told us you were with them all the way to the river. When we intercepted the Nint litnews that you were dangerous fugitives, we figured they knew you were alive." He stopped, out of breath from so much talking so fast. Enodreiwn put container of liquid by his side, which he accepted gratefully.

"Dangerous fugitives?" the taller alien's eyebrows had disappeared in her downy hair.

"Yes," Enoikoawn replied, looking probingly at Enodreiwn. "The entire population was warned to shoot you on sight, no questions asked." The younger alien looked at him as if he had two heads. Obviously, nobody had shared this small piece of information with her. It didn't really matter. Enoikoawn sipped some more of his drink.

"I have been looking for you all over" he went on. "We have other agents looking every fifty miles or so on the Nint side of the river. We eventually figured you that's where you went, under the dampening field. Because nobody would expect you to have gone back. That was smart." Enoikoawn looked at the tall alien. He desperately needed her to believe him. And yet he was aware that purely on the basis of his looks he might be exactly the person she would trust the least. He didn't see a choice but to lay all his cards on the table.

"We have figured a way to get you out of here" he added "I mean, the Verkaels. There is a weekly flight from the Nint regional capital in the Barest'ig area to the capital of Verkael. It's only about an hour from here. You'll need litpads and a medical certification. That will allow you to keep your faces hidden. I'll also bring wigs."

Enoikoawn could read in the tall one's raised eyebrow that she had not much faith in what he was saying.

"Is that the only option you have to offer us?" she asked.

Enoikoawn felt himself flush. How dare she? A dirty alien, questioning the best plan laid out by Verkales and Nints, her superiors in every way. He made a conscious effort to calm himself down, reminding himself that these aliens had suffered tremendously at the hands of his people and that he could be more forgiving.

"It is the best option" he explained. "If you leave the Barest'ig area, the Nint sensor arrays will read your biosigns. That's how the guards found you initially. It is only in the mountains that the sensors do not work, and the hoverport is in the mountains. They don't even attempt to read biosigns at the hoverport, it would be a waste of money."

"Couldn't the Verkaels send a space shuttle?" the tall one persisted.

Enoikoawn shook his head "Not anymore. Since the investigation by the Overarching Council, the Nints have tightened the defensive network. There is now a duplicate alert system, and we haven't found an algorithm that works to penetrate it."

"Perhaps we could transport out." That was the younger one. Enoikoawn stopped and looked at her fully. Until now, he only had had a side glimpse of her, his attention focused on the taller alien. As he was taking in her features, he realized that she was not heavy, as he had initially assumed. The realization hit him with almost physical force, making him stutter and drop his gaze. "Ah, Uh" he started. Then he looked up at her in earnest "I'm sorry."

She seemed to understand what he was saying, and at the same time take it in stride. "What about transporting us?" she asked again, more pointedly.

Enoikoawn sighed. "The Verkaels can't do that without the Nints noticing, and the Nints would consider this is a hostile move, akin to declaring war. They would take immediate revenge on whatever is being transported. We think the risk is too great." He explained lamely.

"So you are suggesting we should walk in the middle of a hoverport full of Nints and board one of their crafts?" the first alien was back at it.

Enoikoawn sighed again. Even to him it sounded like a far-fletched plan. "I am saying that with the right disguise and the proper litwork, that the Verkaels would provide, we could have you hover to Verkael like any other Nint with a business purpose" he reassured them. Now, he needed to give them time to think through all the options and come to the realization that this was the best plan.

"Listen," he went on, "I will be back in five days, with the litwork and the wigs. When I come back we can start talking about the details."

"What details?" the tall one asked. Enoikoawn nodded. Of course she would ask. "We still have to get you to the hoverport" he explained "and through security." He needed to leave now before she could ask more questions. The truth was that they had not fully finished figuring out a plan of action.

"You're not sharing our meal?" that was Enodreiwn.

"I would love to" Enoikoawn replied, and he really would "but I need to get word out."

And he quickly left before the tall alien could ask one more question.

x

The hovercraft that had been shadowing Enoikoawn lifted into the sunset right after he did. They had waited three hours for him to come back. That meant he must have found something. The Nints in the cabin talked to each other, trying to figure where he might have gone. They would keep trailing him, in the hope he would eventually go directly there. Unless they were able to figure out where he had been for the past few hours.


	24. TnT's White Space

As soon as Enoikoawn was gone, T'Pol turned to Hoshi "We need to leave. Now."

Hoshi felt full force a wave of anxiety come from the Commander. This was so unusual that she sat there in silence, trying to sort who was feeling what.

"Why are you leaving?" Enodreiwn asked, taken over by the happenings.

T'Pol turned to her "We do not know if he is telling the truth. We also do not know if he was followed, but if he could find us, others could find us as well."

Seeing Enodreiwn stricken face, she added "You're not in danger."

"Let me help you." Enodreiwn became all business, opening chests and pulling out various supplies, pushing them in the arms of the women or piling them on the table. T'Pol had gotten the rucksacks out of whatever hiding place she had them stashed in and was efficiently sorting clothes and food.

T'Pol looked at her "Why did you not shoot us on sight?" she asked.

Enodreiwn sighed, shrugged. "I was going to, but then you stepped in front of her, as if to protect her. That was such a Dalgort-like gesture that it made me think perhaps you were not as they said. I didn't think aliens could care for each other like Dalgorts do."

Hoshi sat in stupefied silence. She had been asleep when Enodreiwn had found them. Obviously a lot more had transpired than she knew. She wasn't sure, of all she was learning, which was the more surprising. That they had a prize on their heads or that T'Pol had stepped in front of an armed gun to protect her.

She was really starting to rethink that whole emotionless thing. Even when T'Pol had expressed that Vulcans did have emotions but suppressed them, she had always imagined these were ersatz emotions, pale reflections of what a Human would feel. She was starting to realize that the Nints were not the only ones guilty of preconceptions. Perhaps T'Pol did know exceedingly well what she was talking about when she referred to emotions. And as if on cue, T'Pol started filling the rucksacks with a lot more strength than was strictly necessary.

It was all going too quickly. Hoshi kept her counsel until they were in the basement, where T'Pol was rummaging through the little they had as if trying to sort what was necessary for them to take along. Hoshi had never seen T'Pol harried before and the Vulcan seemed on the verge of snapping.

"Enoikoawn might be telling the truth" she commented. "It could be that in a few days he'll be back with papers and wigs."

T'Pol eyed her with distrust "Is there a reason you would like us to remain here until he comes back?"

Hoshi was taken aback by the reaction, too flustered to think through what it meant "Not at all, it's just that he seemed to be trustworthy."

T'Pol narrowed her eyes, looking at her suspiciously. "You were the reason he came here. He saw you when you were outside. Was that your plan? To have him come and find us here?"

Hoshi could only stare open-mouthed at her CO. Suddenly something Malcolm had said flashed through her mind. It was right after they came back from the Selaya, when T'Pol was in sickbay for a whole week. He had mentioned that Vulcans when they lost control of their emotions became paranoid and suspicious. Paranoia and suspicion did seem to be the order of the day.

She filtered through her memories, trying to remember the last time T'Pol had meditated. And realized with horror that it might have been during their crossing of the mudflats, if then. Chances are that the Vulcan had not been meditating then and was just keeping a silent vigil over Hoshi, as she seemed to be doing more and more as time went by. Like she had their first night at Enodreiwn's. After that, she had been too sick from the food until they found something else the Vulcan physiology could metabolize. By then they had just moved to the basement, and T'Pol had gone back to a silent vigil until she could verify that Enodreiwn was not a threat, which was … the day before. T'Pol simply had not been meditating.

At once, Hoshi knew they wouldn't be leaving that same evening. First of all, she was not going to follow her CO when the woman was half out of her mind. Second, there may be good reasons to leave, but there may be just as good reasons to stay, and they needed to sort out their options. And in order to do that, third, it was imperative the Commander meditate.

"You need to meditate" she said in Vulcan, using the communal second person imperative to let her know this was not a polite suggestion, that her emotional state was reverberating onto others. T'Pol looked at her in surprise. Hoshi had gambled that the shock of the rarely used grammatical form would cut through the suspicion that was befogging the Vulcan's brain. Hoshi's heart was beating at a rapid rate, but she showed no outward sign that she was intimidated. "I will sleep in the shed" she went on,

"Ensign, I –"

Hoshi didn't even let her finish "You need to be in optimal shape if we have any hope of getting out. We are not going anywhere until I know you are rested." And she left the basement, shutting the door on any further protestation from T'Pol. ' _Game, set and match_ ' thought Hoshi to herself.

xx

Trip looked around in awe. It had been months since he had been in the white space. He quickly looked around until he could locate the figure he knew would be there. But in a highly unusual manner, she was not sitting in a meditation pause, she was pacing the length of the white space, still in her uniform though there was something off about the way she looked. He couldn't quite tell what it was. "T'Pol?"

She startled at the sound of his voice, something else that struck him as odd. He had never seen her startle before. Then she turned to him, advancing a hand in disbelief.

"Trip?"

He smiled in return, his brightest smile, always, for her.

"Trip!" she rushed to him and clung tight. But this was different than her usual embraces. First, it was a tight embrace, devoid of the usual distance she liked to maintain even in the white space. And it was more than an embrace, it was a full-body desperate grab. And as Trip let his arms encircle her, a little taken aback, he felt through the bond a rapid machine-gun like stream of emotions, which left him dizzy and his brain ringing.

"Hold it, hold it" he pleaded. "Not so fast. Even I can't process that many different feelings that quickly." And to his immense shock he felt her shudder in his arms, in a way that was both unexpected and impossible. If he hadn't known better, he'd say she was crying, but Vulcan did not cry…

Another preconception laid bare by current events. Vulcan did cry, they simply didn't shed tears. This Vulcan was sobbing violently in his arms and all he could do was hold her, stroking her back, whispering "Shhh" in a vain attempt to soothe her. Trip had just enough presence of mind to sit cross-legged on the ground, dragging her with him without relinquishing his hold on her, until she was seated in his lap, head buried in his neck, still raked by long shudders that didn't seem to have a beginning or an end.

"shhh, shhh" he was stroking her back, tears flowing freely down his face. He was Human and couldn't help expressing the emotions that were bombarding him. Slowly, he could feel her calming down and he just held her close, tightly pressed against his chest. Her breathing slowed and became regular. If he could hold her and let her sleep until the sun came up, he gladly would. But he was aware the link would soon disappear, he didn't have the ability to maintain it. Once she calmed down and the telepathic surge lessened, they would be separated again.

A confusing jumble of images was hammering at him through the bond, of buildings he didn't recognize, bodies cut down by bullets, mixed in with pain, anger and hunger, anxiety and sorrow. There had been deaths, many deaths. Someone was at risk. There was the picture of a pregnant Hoshi and initial confusion about the who's and the how's and the why wasn't I told's and then the horrified realization about the how's. He grabbed her "It's going too fast. Slow down a little. My small human brain can only capture so much at a time." And then the pieces of the puzzle coalesced in a nightmarish sequence of events that came up as impressions in his mind, too real to be discarded, not detailed enough to be feel real, something about genetic armies and the guns of the mudflats until he reached the safe harbor of Enodreiwn.

"Is this where you are?" he asked, once he could speak again, once he had regained a much necessary third-person perspective. He felt her nod, head still nestled against his neck. "We'll find you." He sent reassurance through the bond, the simple assertion of a truth that would not be shaken "I'll find you." He chuckled at the intense question mark that came back his way. "Don't worry, I'll talk to Starfleet. I'm almost done here anyway."

He finally realized while her image seemed off. She was presenting the image of herself as a Starfleet Officer, but there was another image in there, a more recent one, which she was still trying to integrate. "Let me see know the way you really are" he whispered. The uniform disappeared and instead he was faced with the image of an overly thin woman with downy hair growing at a straight angle from her head. He chuckled "You look like a young bird" and added quickly "it's a compliment", knowing she could easily misunderstand the image and the feeling that went with it. He had no idea what young birds looked like on Vulcan. He passed his hand through the downy growth, enjoying the feeling.

He cupped her face in his hands and started kissing her features one by one. He stopped suddenly. "You're not eating" he said, tracing the deep purple lines under her eyes. T'Pol sighed "It seems that most of Dalgort's food groups are somewhat toxic to Vulcans, except for two."

Trip shook his head. "We need to get you out of there fast".

This seemed to trigger another acute reaction from T'Pol. She grabbed the front of his uniform. "Trip! It's Hoshi. The Nint gestation period is much shorter than humans. I don't know if her body will be ready when it's time."

"How long do we have" he replied, rapidly computing to nine months in his head.

T'Pol clung harder "One to two months at most." Trip noted the uncharacteristic lack of precision. He felt through the bond what she was not saying. They needed Phlox. Again, he tried his hardest to send reassuring feelings back. "We'll find a way to get Phlox there. Enterprise"

-must have been sent on its next mission" came back. Trip thought, brow furrowed. "Don't worry about it" he finally sent back. "There will be a solution."

The white space started growing fainter and he knew they were running out of time. T'Pol was close to falling apart from mental and physical stress and malnutrition. He hoped she could cling to the help he had provided.

"I'll find you" was his parting thought.

x

Trip came back to in one of the hallways leading to the prototype of the warp seven engine. He looked around. He had to get off the project and go find T'Pol. There were only a couple of tests left, Starfleet could easily do them itself. Why the hell hadn't Archer said anything!

He threw the socket he had been holding at his aide, who snatched it just in time, surprise etched across his face. "You take care of calibrating the feed, I need to call Starfleet." And he took off at a run down the corridor.

xx


	25. Point of No Return

The next morning, the Vulcan looked exactly the same as always, but there was a slight hum in the back of Hoshi's mind that hadn't been there before. Focusing instantly on its source, she realized it was more a sound of spatial harmony than an actual physical phenomenon. Could it be the expression of a Vulcan mind at rest? Hoshi catalogued the sound in her auditory memory. She realized she now had a marker to help her know whether her companion was doing well or not.

T'Pol seemed as imperturbable as ever as they discussed what to do next with Enodreiwn around the first meal. The Vulcan was still adamant they needed to leave the compound right away and Hoshi could see her point, however reluctantly. Even if Enoikoawn was trustworthy and came back with the documents he promised, there was still the possibility he might have been followed. Every single person that learned of their location multiplied the risk of them being discovered.

"Where will you go?" Enodreiwn was not keen on seeing the aliens leave, if only because they all had settled into a comfortable routine. She also worried about other Nints shooting them on sight.

"We need to go back to the delta." T'Pol replied.

Hoshi froze, looking at the Commander. A wave of anxiety washed over her and she felt she was going to be sick to her stomach. She felt herself flush, then blanch.

T'Pol looked at her impassively "I realize this is a source of emotional distress for you, Ensign, but Enoikoawn did mention that it took them a while to find us because they never thought we would have gone back to Nint territory. It will be an even more remote thought that we went back to the delta, especially after they destroyed all the camps."

"They destroyed all the camps?" Enodreiwn repeated, in surprise.

T'Pol turned to her "Yes. The planes that attacked the camps were not Arumid planes. The Arumids are a technology-indifferent species and do not have attack planes."

Enodreiwn had to nod in acknowledgement, as little as she liked the idea. "But how do you know they destroyed all of the camps?" she went on.

Hoshi gave T'Pol a meaningful look. While they had told Enodreiwn about the camps and the breeding program, they had not been quite as forthcoming about the objectives of the Nint government or about what happened to the Arumid women once they reached the water edge. Partly to protect their protector from a truth she would find distressful, and partly to protect her from knowledge that could expose her to risk in her personal life.

"Extrapolating from the actual density of twenty-six bodies per ten square meters when we were at the point where everyone was being herded to, and using a rough proxy of an area two thousand yards wide by one hundred yards deep, there would have been over five hundred thousand women marching together, which is more than the entire population of all the camps taken together." T'Pol usual overly-detailed answer once again proved very effective at making the listener give up on the question. Hoshi had to admit she was watching a master at work.

T'Pol's turned to Enodreiwn. "How far is the delta?"

Hoshi could still not believe she was serious about going there. The place had been blown to smithereens. They were there and they saw the barracks go into flames in the distance. And she had seriously bad memories associated with the place. At the same time, she had to admit the idea had merit. Who in their right mind would ever go back to the place they escaped from, and who would ever go find them there? Nobody, that's who.

"It's twenty or thirty miles down the hills, depending which canyon you go to" Enodreiwn replied. "But the entire area is off-limits, nobody has been allowed to go there in years."

"Do you have an old map of the delta area" T'Pol asked. Enodreiwn looked at her silently for several seconds, then seemed to resign herself to the inevitable and got up. They heard her forage in the common chamber and she came back with an old version of a litpadd. She handed it to T'Pol. "Here, this is from when I was young."

It didn't take long for them to identify a place that was within authorized space where the road branched off in three directions, all going down into the delta canyons. Enodreiwn readily accepted to fly them there. She wouldn't know where exactly they went, which gave her and them a measure of protection.

The hovercraft lifted off just as the suns started shining, the glare of the sun catching on the main visor panel, reflected in the ceramic discs covering the roofs of the compound.

X

Enodreiwn shut off the hovercraft engine as they reached the T formed by the intersection of the three roads, landing the vessel with a soft bump. They had all agreed that this was a temporary measure. They would stay away for five days, until Enoikoawn came back. If he had lied, Nint guards would show up within the next couple of days. If he had been followed, his followers would come to the compound the same day or right after. If everything went according to plan, they would come back to Enodreiwn's and work on the escape plan.

T'Pol didn't mention to Enodreiwn her compound would soon also be in the hair triggers of Starfleet and, if she knew Trip, Vulcan. Somehow that made her a little more confident in their chances.

"I will be back after sunset in exactly five days" Enodreiwn was repeating the Commander's instructions, committing them to memory. "I will flash the headlight twice so that you know it is me. Only twice. Anything else and you will not come out. If I flash twice, you will come out and I can fill you in on what happened. You can see if you can come back."

T'Pol had been acquiescing along as Enodreiwn went over the instructions. "That is correct" she confirmed.

"But what if one of us can't make the meeting?" Hoshi asked. "Shouldn't we have a fall-back plan?" Both Enodreiwn and T'Pol turned to look at her, then looked at each other. T'Pol nodded "The Ensign is right." Enodreiwn huffed, the answer was so simple "If you're not there or I'm not there, or anything happens, I'll come back the next day" she said as if it were obvious. "I'll keep coming back until we meet again."

Hoshi and T'Pol eyed her in silence. Hoshi couldn't quite believe that this woman who almost shot them, who wouldn't open her house except for the basement, would go out of her way to come wait for them. But then, she had seen stranger things. As if to give her thoughts even more credence, Enodreiwn reached out behind the driver's ledge, pulled out a heavy-looking garment. "Here, take my wrapcoat" she pushed the clothing at T'Pol, who was surprised into taking it, made to give it back. "No, no" Enodreiwn shook her mane "You are always cold, I see it."

And then they were out of the hovercraft and she was gone.

xx

Phlox looked up irritably at the interruption. He was never going to get the Dalgort Medical Exchange, the DME for short, started if people kept pulling him right and left to deal with topical issues. Fortunately, this time it was his friend, Dojtaorv the Verkael doctor, who walked in. Phlox got up from his drafting table, walked over to effusively shake hands.

"My dear Dojtaorv, I'm glad to be able to tell you things are proceeding very nicely, very nicely indeed." Phlox smile stretched from ear to ear. "If we keep going at this pace, well, I'll expect we'll have the new organization in place within a couple of months!" Phlox beamed again. They had just learned where T'Pol and Hoshi were , thanks to Trip. It would be a short matter to extract them, with four weeks or so to spare before their lives were in danger. That would be enough time. When he wasn't busy with the DME, he was studying Dalgort reproduction, trying to figure what could be done and when to do it, and he was quite certain there was the perfect solution somewhere out there waiting for him.

But Dojtaorv looked at him with something akin to chagrin, and Phlox noticed his mane was standing a little taller than usual. He stopped in his tracks, brow furrowing as his smile started vanishing "Is anything wrong? You seem under stress."

The Verkael doctor looked apologetic. Phlox knew that as much as Dojtaorv professed to despise everything political, he was still very much involved in all the behind-the-scenes happenings that characterized the kind of mission he had embarked upon.

"I just don't know quite how to tell you this-" the Verkael doctor started.

Phlox's heart fell "Something happen to the women?"

Dojtaorv realized where Phlox was headed, vehemently shook his head. "Not at all, not at all. We're still working as per the plan." As luck would have it, one of the Verkael agents on Nint had located the women the day before they had received the information from Starfleet.

"No," the doctor went on, "I am not sure how to tell you, but we have received a direct request for your services."

Phlox rolled his eyes. Direct request for his services was pretty much all he'd been dealing with since he had arrived on Dalgort. Sometimes he felt like setting up the DME was a side activity. He didn't see what was different with this one that Dojtaorv would be tied into knots about it. "Yes, well?" he prompted, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Dojtaorv cringed and his yellow mane went up another couple of millimeters. "The request came from the Nint government."

The silence that fell on the room was so thick one could have heard a pin drop. Phlox froze in place, settled back into his heels. "No! There is absolutely no way I will help anyone in that government or on the Nint world. You can let them know right now and let me get back to the DME project." Phlox was furious that Dojtaorv would even ask, even if he understood the necessities of diplomacy.

"The Nint government is willing to help" Dojtaorv quickly spoke up before Phlox could box himself into a corner with any further declaration.

"They will hand T'Pol and Hoshi over and provide safe passage back from Nint, hmm?" Phlox prompted.

Dojtaorv's mane crept up still a little higher, the equivalent of a deep blush. "They're not able to do that because the diverse factions within the government are not in agreement. But we should be able to get some benefits as long as they're not public or visible."

Phlox's glare could have cut through metal, and it seemed to cut through Dojtaorv, who visibly deflated. But the Verkael was too much of a diplomat to consider that was a loss. It was just an opening move.

xx

They had been walking down the center road for three hours and all of a sudden Hoshi recognized the surrounding hills, the canyon, the white road. She knew where they were. Trust the Vulcan to have gone back to the exact same camp they had been held in, probably had the whole thing on a map somewhere in her head. It felt surreal to be walking there, her whole being was screaming at her to get away, turn around, she shouldn't be there. She saw the squat building and stopped in surprise. T'Pol had been walking ahead but felt the sudden change in their rhythm and stopped a few yards away. Hoshi was looking at the expanse of the canyon, empty except for the shells of the burn-out buildings. "Why wasn't that building destroyed?" she asked, and at the same time realized she already knew the answer.

"The Nints were the ones attacking the camps" T'Pol replied. "They needed to destroy the barracks for evidence reasons, but they didn't want to destroy the headquarters. Not fully."

That was when it hit Hoshi that the whole thing had indeed been a set-up. As much as T'Pol had told her, and she believed it, it had not emotionally sunk it yet. Until that moment.

It took another quite a while longer before they were at the structure itself. The spiked fence had been blown apart, there were trenches in the ground where the light curtains had been removed. Hoshi was feeling more and more nervous as they approached the building, wondering how T'Pol could just walk up there like it was some goddam leisurely stroll.

As they got nearer, they could see that the building, while still standing, had been struck too. There were gaping holes where ordnance must have gone in and exploded, the part above the ground was useless as a shelter. T'Pol walked in as if to a well-known place. Hoshi saw her go to a wall, touch a panel in a series of rotating moves as flashing lights blinked back in acceptance, and all of sudden a recessed panel in the wall slid open and they were staring at a staircase going downstairs. T'Pol turned to Hoshi "Power cells" she said, as explanation for why the door systems still seemed to be working.

However reluctantly, Hoshi had to admit that T'Pol's plan was brilliant. The lower levels under the squat buildings would have been protected from the bombs and would still be accessible, and T'Pol had been working there for three long months. She knew exactly how they were set-up, how to turn the power generators back on or, worst case scenario, how to manually operate the complex. They would have protection, water, electricity, and if so access to a CPU, and all the equipment in the world they might need to get to Verkael. And possibly food supplies. If there were any the Commander would know where they were.

They kept going through the underground floors until they reached the computer room. The door was thrust open, nothing was blinking, there was no humming indicating the central processing unit was working. T'Pol went to a large bank of machines in the center of the room, hit a couple of switches, stopped, her hands on each side of the array. "The core processing unit has been stripped away" she sighed, obviously disappointed. She collected herself, turned to Hoshi, pushing herself off the machine "We need to set up a living area for our needs".

They retraced their steps through the empty rooms and corridors. Hoshi was feeling increasingly nervous. The place was spooky enough empty of any living soul, the fact that it was the camp where they were held made it nightmarishly so. Her misgivings seemed to be echoed in T'Pol's step. She could tell her walk had slowed as they passed by non-descript doors, obviously non-medical, probably cells or something similar that must tie back to unpleasant memories.

"It's okay" she said to her companion.

"Of course, Ensign" T'Pol replied, getting back to normal speed. In her back, Hoshi mimicked 'of course, Ensign', rolling her eyes. Gosh, the Vulcan was infuriating.


	26. Loose Lips

Enoikoawn got back in his hovercraft, the supple leather satchel wrapped around his back. The team on Verkael had been working night and day on creating a full set of implements using the measurements he had taken while he kept the aliens busy discussing extraction methods and he would soon be back at Enodreiwn's. He looked forward to showing them the travel litpadds and the wigs and outfits that would allow them to board the regional hovercraft.

The suns rose on another beautiful day. Enoikoawn pressed on the gas pedal slightly more than usual, mindless of the area he was traveling in. He knew it like the back of his hand. As a result, he didn't see the large hovercraft that took off from the ground soon after he flew over, banking left when he did, veering right when he did, and otherwise following his flight path while staying well in the distance.

xx

"What the hell, Jon?!"

Archer looked at Trip on the viewscreen. That was a hell of a 'hello, how are you'. He guessed that meant Trip knew.

The engineer was fuming. "How come nobody bothered to tell me that T'Pol has been missing all these months?! There I am like a fool thinking that everything is going fine with you guys, only to find out you lost T'Pol?!"

Archer narrowed his eyes at Trip, noting the angled neck of a contraband Romulan ale bottle right by the engineer.

"Are you drinking on duty, Commander?" he asked. Attack was the best defense, and besides, it might buy him some time to come up with answers.

"You bet I'm drinking and I won't be on duty for weeks." Trip was starting to slur "That's about the only thing that keeps me from taking this scow over and pushing it to warp 5.5." Trip looked around him then back at Jonathan. "I'm on my way to Dalgort." He said by way of explanation.

Archer's stomach dropped to his heels. Now what did Trip do? "Does Starfleet know?" he hazarded.

The man on the viewscreen chuckled. "Starfleet, my parents, T'Pau, Soval, everyone I could reach."

Archer winced. There was no fury like an engineer misled. He could only imagine the political fallout. "And Starfleet let you go?" Archer went on.

"Let me go, provided my with transport, this snail of a ship I'm on right now" Trip looked around him with something akin to disgust "We were almost done anyway, all that was left was the testing, and they agreed they didn't really need me for that. Plus I was not in the mood." Archer nodded, thinking to himself Starfleet must have decided getting the engineer away from the engines was the safest for all concerned.

"I'm not going to be of much help, Starfleet has us in the Daramind quadrant, about as far from Dalgort as they could without losing us altogether." Archer explained.

Trip looked at him almost unkindly, and Archer realized that the engineer's brain was far from fogged by the drink. "No, but you're going to tell me everything that happened, from the top" he said "if only because I'm your best friend" Trip smirked as he said it, obviously feeling the label may no longer apply "and you don't want me to go stark mad from unsatisfied curiosity while I wait for this… ship… to get me there."

"How long till you get to Dalgort?" Archer wondered if he should tell Trip that Plox was already there.

"Another couple weeks." Trip frowned "now tell me what happened."

"It's kind of a long story" Archer started, seeing Trip nod in reply. Something suddenly came to him and he narrowed his eyes at Trip "How did you find out?"

The engineer sighed "T'Pol."

"So she's alive?!" Archer bit his lip, he wished he had been a little less obviously delighted. This time it was Trip's turn to look at him with narrowed eyes.

"What do you mean 'she's alive'? What the hell has been going on? You didn't know?" the engineer's brain was firing in all directions.

"We weren't sure" Archer confessed. "But you know where she is?!" the story could wait, they needed to alert Starfleet.

Trip cut him short as if he were reading his mind. Hopefully not something he had picked up along the way. "I do, as does Starfleet and everybody else I've talked to over the last few days." A muscle worked in Trip's jaw, then he sighed and stretched, forcing himself to settle back in his chair "I can tell this is going to be a long story. Better make it good."

xx

Enoikoawn stepped off the hovercraft, started down the path to the main chambers. He knew Enodreiwn would have spotted the hovercraft from one of the litholes. He knocked on the front panel and proceeded down the main tunnel, hardly waiting for her to invite him in. She was in the eating chamber, standing behind the table where she and the aliens had been sharing a meal five days ago, the rests of the second meal before her. The aliens were not there. He expected they would come out once she had confirmed he had brought what he had promised.

Enoikoawn unstrapped the satchel from his back, handed it to her. She took out the clothes and the wigs, neatly stashing them on top of the personal items gathered in a well-ordered pile in the corner. Then she took out the litpadds and put them on the table. As she was going to pick one up, they heard the front panel burst open and then the sound of running down the tunnel. Enodreiwn grabbed the litpads just as three Nint black guards rushed into the eating chamber, arms pointing at them. From the sounds reverberating in the chamber, another half-dozen were making their way in.

"What are you doing in my house?!" Enodreiwn would never know where she found the courage to stand to the guards. The leader turned to her, invisible behind his mask.

"We believe you are harboring dangerous aliens."

She scoffed, motioning with her chin to Enoikoawn "That's as close to an alien as you'll find here, and I am not 'harboring' him, as you say."

Enoikoawn looked at her in surprise, without saying anything. Didn't she realize the guards were going to be poring over every last inch of the compound, that they would find the aliens? But Enodreiwn seemed mindless of the danger. She grabbed the rests of her meal and put them away, then sat down, arms crossed and mane raised, waiting for the guards to be done. Enoikoawn looked for the litpadds that had been on the table but couldn't find anything. Enodreiwn had last had them but her hands were empty. He hoped the guards had not already swiped them. If they had, he was a dead man.

The leader turned to his guards, pointing at Enoikoawn. "Take him, on suspicion of being an accomplice!" Enoikoawn started protesting, was cut short by a baton thrust in his flank. They walked him away, doubled in pain.

Two hours later, the dozen guards were towering in the eating chamber and in the central chamber, dwarfing everything in the house, including its owner. One of the guards handed something to the leader, who grabbed it and rushed over to Enodreiwn, shaking it by her head. Enoikoawn looked but couldn't make out what it was.

"What is this?" the leader bellowed. Enodreiwn briefly closed her eyes. It was the tunics the aliens had worn. She should have put them in the disposal unit but she had a habit of holding on to anything that could be reused in any way on the compound.

She shrugged "Where did you find these, they're not mine." Her mane flattened completely as a sign of her disinterest.

The leader smirked "They were in your shed on your property. You're going to tell me you don't know how they got there?"

Enodreiwn looked straight at him, baring her upper teeth "They are not my clothes and the shed is not part of the main building. Wild animals are always coming to the shed."

"Wild animals don't wear these" the leader snarled in response.

"I don't even know what they are" she retorted.

The leader's mane rose slightly "They were the clothes worn by the aliens when they escaped from jail. As you know. And you're going to tell us where they are."

Enodreiwn chose not to answer. The leader talked to her "We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way, it's up to you." When she still didn't answer, he motioned to the guards. "See what else you can find here."

Enodreiwn stood where she was, behind the eating table, as she heard the guards violently ransacking her home. There was the noise of furniture being tumbled over, the smashing of litglass, she felt them throwing all her neatly arranged decorations across the chambers, mindless of where they fell.

Two guards came in the kitchen, started aggressively rummaging through everything in sight. One of the guards picked up the pile of her belongings in the corner, threw everything on the floor without finding anything suspicious, unaware that the wigs and the pieces of clothing he was stepping on were not Enodreiwn's, had been meant for the aliens.

Another guard shoved her roughly out of the way, started opening the cabinets with the food items in them. She bristled as he grabbed her bag of grain cakes, but he was only looking to see if there was anything behind it, and he shoved the bag back in the cabinet. The invasion didn't take long but it felt like forever. Finally, one of the guards spoke to the leader, who had been waiting in the eating chamber the whole time. "We didn't find anything, sir."

The leader nodded. Enodreiwn breathed easier. Until she saw him come to her and it dawned on her that there were more ways to make things difficult for her than to lay shambles to the inside of her house.


	27. V'Shar Always

Enodreiwn picked herself up from the corner where she had been thrown by the blow, holding her jaw. She had never been hit before. The pain was unbearable and she started crying. The leader was unmoved.

"Just tell us where they are."

"I don't know" she wailed, "I really don't."

The leader took one of the upturned stools, straightened it and sat down. "You really do. You told us the aliens were here and we just went through your hovercraft flight data. We know where you went."

Enodreiwn kept crying softly. "But they wouldn't tell me where they were going. They just forced me to fly them there. I already told you what happened." She had quickly given up that the murderous aliens had invaded her lair one night not long ago and had been holding her hostage, until she agreed to fly them where they wanted. This meshed so well with the leader's viewpoint that he was blindly oblivious to the inconsistencies in her claim. Especially when she repeatedly expressed hatred and aversion for anything non-Nint. Enodreiwn looked at him through tear-bordered lashes "Do you think I would lie to you over a couple of dirty aliens?"

The leader's mane rose in involuntary acquiescence. "They didn't tell you where they were going?" he asked, softly, almost gently.

Enodreiwn's mane rose higher, as if she had just been struck by a sudden memory. "They asked me to come back pick them up. I forgot all about it because I swore to myself I was never going to go back."

The leader leaned forward fiercely "When?" he huffed.

xx

Dojtaorv stopped by the door. He needed to get the alien doctor to agree, there was no time to be wasted.

"The Nint government called again."

Phlox was in no mood to be bothered "You know my answer" he said and turned back to his work. But this time Dojtaorv didn't back down "It's no longer a question of you not wanting to go" he told his friend.

"What do you mean?" Phlox was intrigued.

"There are forces at play that go much beyond the cares of a single alien doctor and his colleagues" Dojtaorv replied. Phlox looked up at his colleague, stung. The Verkael was going on "The person who needs medical care if a very important member of the Nint government, possibly its most important member. He is willing to make concessions to have you come treat him, concessions that he actually has the power to keep."

"As if the Nints have been models of integrity."

Dojtaorv went on, heedless of Phlox's sarcasm "There have been new developments. One of our agents has been arrested by the Nints and the government member is willing to let him go free in exchange for your help."

Dojtaorv could read on Phlox's face that the Denobulan doctor thought these were internal Nint/Verkael dealings and nothing that concerned him. He decided to go for broke. "He was arrested at that woman's place, Enodreiwn, where your friends were supposed to be. They haven't arrested her because the aliens were not there." He could see that got Phlox's attention. Dojtaorv knew exactly how to clinch the deal "The Nint government member is willing to let you stay on Nint an extra three days for you to travel to her place, meet her, see for yourself."

Phlox straightened from where his computer screen. "Just like that?"

Dorjtaorv's mane rose slightly. "You know how the Nints are about anything non-Nint on their soil. Arrivals and departures from Nint are strictly monitored. For them to let you travel there is a huge deal. "

"But they won't let the women go to Verkael even if I find them" Phlox protested.

"But at least you could see them in person, even on Nint. This is more than we have been able to achieve in the past five months" Dojtaorv pointed out.

Phlox knew he had no choice. He had to go to Nint and talk to that woman. Knowing the Nints, he gave no credence to their declaration that the aliens had not been at her place. He didn't want to entertain the thought but it could just as easily have been that they had found T'Pol and Hoshi. Or killed them.

xx

T'Pol was lying down on the ground, wrapped in the heavy wrapcoat that Enodreiwn had given her. In the night and supine, she was impossible to see, half-buried in the sand, any potentially lighter area of her body covered with dark sandy loam. She used the V'shar trick of forcing her nictitating eyelids down, covering the white of her eyes. She was invisible against the dark ground.

She waited, protected from the chill of the cooling earth. Finally she heard the rumble of a hovercraft in the distance. No crafts ever came by the meeting point, where the road forked in three directions. She knew it must be Enodreiwn. Still she waited. The hovercraft stopped at the junction, right by where T'Pol was, but the beam of the headbeam was not powerful enough to pick her up among the shadows on the ground. The hovercraft hovered for a couple of minutes than its headbeam flashed twice. T'Pol waited half-a-second longer. Just as she was about to get up, the headbeam flashed again. She froze, unmoving. A couple of minutes went by, and then the headbeam flashed again, three times. She knew then that Enodreiwn was telling her not to come.

She didn't move. The hovercraft's headbeam was shut off, the hovercraft still hovering in place. Then the engine was killed. She felt the bump of the heavy craft touching down on the ground, reverberating through the sandy loam all the way to her. She called on her skills to slow down her heart rate and her breathing, getting into a light trance that would keep her as still as water. She heard the door of the hovercraft open. From where she was, through the lowered eyelids, it was impossible to make the details of what was going on without the headbeam. She felt the vibration of someone stepping off the hovercraft, waiting in the night by the machine. It was a heavy body, heavier than Enodreiwn would ever be, a male most probably.

Silence fell. She heard the breathing of whoever it was had stepped out of the hovercraft. He circled the craft a couple of times, in a spiral, expanding outward as he walked. She followed his slow progress through the vibrations in the ground as he took each step. The next circle brought him within two feet of where she was lying. If she had not been in a trance, she would have held her breath, the sharp intake possibly giving her away. The man went back to the craft, defeated by the depth of the night, waited for another fifteen minutes, then climbed back onboard, talking roughly to someone inside. Enodreiwn she guessed. The hovercraft peeled off silently, going back the way it came, turning the headbeam back on only after a few yards.

The sounds from the hovercraft died in the distance, and still T'Pol didn't move. Lying in wait was a skill of patience, whether one was prey or hunter. Another hour went by without a sound of movement from her. Insects were walking freely over her face and hands but her immobility made they didn't sting. Suddenly she heard the sound of an engine being turned on a short distance away, not far from where the hovercraft had been. A back-up hovercraft that had been waiting in the dark. This one turned its beam on right away, swooped over the area where she was, unable to pick her from the ground she was laying on, then banked in a half-circle that took it back towards the hills. Probably to report that the aliens had not shown up at all.

Once she was sure the craft was gone and no remaining sound waves were left, T'Pol got up. Something must have happened. There would be no going back to Enodreiwn's. Now they had to figure out what to do next.

xx

"Come in" Phlox called. He already knew who was calling. It was the Verkael contact on Nint, the one who was to escort him to Enodreiwn's and back. Who was also the agent that had been arrested and then released in exchange for Phlox's coming to heal the regional governor. The treatment had been effective and the government official was cured. And pleased.

Still, Phlox had not been able to wrestle more than the three extra days from him. One day to get there, one day to try and make contact, one day to come back. Without the women, of course. The Nint governor's generosity did not extend to letting the aliens go. He had released the Verkael agent because they had known about him for a long time and had been spying on him, spies spying on spies, and they would rather have him there, a known entity, than have to try and identify the next agent.

The Nints didn't know where the aliens were but the governor had made it clear to Phlox that even if they did, they wouldn't let the women go because of their unauthorized entry into the Greater Kingdom of Nint. Phlox was fairly certain it had more to do with what they had seen and what they knew. An unwelcome pair of witnesses, which the Nints would be well rid of. It was imperative he find them before they did.

The governor had also made it clear that he did not share his colleagues' views, due to his gratitude at having been cured of a potentially terminal disease. He had given word that the woman Enodreiwn was to be left alone and lifted the search order on the aliens in the Barest'ig region, his personal fiefdom. But his authority did not extend to the rest of the Nint world and he wasn't willing to expand political capital on wrangling the same assurances from his colleagues.

Which created a contradiction for Phlox. If he found the women, he would be leading the rest of the Nints directly to them. And he only had the paper-thin assurance of the Nint governor that he had called his guards off and would keep them off if he found them. He wasn't sure if he should hope to find them or not.

Phlox's attention was drawn back to the man who had just entered. A tall Nint, middle-aged, walking a little stiffly. It didn't take long for the doctor to realize the stiff gait was the result of physical pain. Dojtaorv did say the Nint had been arrested at Enodreiwn's compound. Phlox had a good idea about how the Nints would treat those they arrested, based on everything they'd done so far.

"I am your contact" the alien introduced himself right away. "My name is Enoikoawn. Are you ready?"

Was he ready? Phlox had been ready for five months now. He grabbed his bag, made a broad gesture with his arm letting the Nint man know to lead the way.

xx

Hoshi had been waiting for hours on end in the center when T'Pol walked in, covered in dirt from head to toe. Her heart fell at the sight.

"What happened?" she asked.

T'Pol shook her head "I don't know, but we have to assume Enodreiwn has been compromised."

Another time, Hoshi would have reacted dismally to the news. But she had not been feeling well and her attention was focused on keeping it hidden from the Commander. That was counting without the Vulcan's built-in thermostat. T'Pol whipped around as she was walking past Hoshi on her way to the cleaning room. "You have a fever" she said.

Hoshi nodded, her arms crossed in front of her, holding herself for warmth. "I think so."

She was too sick to protest being dragged down one level to where the medical rooms where. She was so sick that she didn't know if she had been dragged down or carried there, though she couldn't remember taking the stairs or walking there. Everything disappeared into a confused hallucination of lights and sounds from which she would wake up every so often to find T'Pol staring at some medical tool. Did the Vulcan know anything about Human physiology? Hoshi reflected she might, she was a science officer after all. She certainly hoped she did.

What was wrong with her? She wasn't feeling sick with a disease, nothing was hurting, yet the fever was relentlessly beating at her brain.


	28. Empty-Handed

Phlox could tell Enoikoawn was nervous as he tapped the front panel, waiting for permission to come in. Finally, a voice inside told them to proceed, and the Nint man stepped into the entrance tunnel, followed by Phlox, still completely wrapped from head to toe in a long travel cloak. Enoikoawn led him straight to the eating chamber. Phlox only caught a glance of the other rooms but there was a sense of general disarray, as if things had been hastily put back together without great care. A Nint female was sitting on a stool by the eating table. Phlox's heart skipped a beat. He recognized her from the Verkael files. It was Enodreiwn.

She looked up at them and Enoikoawn gasped while his mane stood on end. Phlox stood back amazed at the sight of the rising mane. He was brutally brought back to the reality of their situation by the woman's swollen and bruised jaw. Enoikoawn was already by her side, had taken hold of her hand "What happened?" She looked at him as if what happened was no big mystery. Phlox fiddled with his coat, finally dropping of the coat and getting hold of his mediscanner, and started his examination. "Hmm, nothing broken," he finally said. "Here, let me give you something for the pain." She recoiled at his appearance, then seemed to get a hold of herself and nodded. Phlox hesitated then pressed the hypo to the middle of her back. Based on his research on Nint anatomy, this would be the core neural pathway. Her mane relaxed visibly and she looked at Enoikoawn questioningly.

"The doctor is a friend of the aliens," he said. "He was called to Nint by the government and negotiated with them to come see you."

"How do I know he is a friend of them?" she replied, still looking at the Nint man, but shooting a sidelong glance at Phlox, who felt acutely aware of being a Denobulan.

"Madam," Phlox jumped in "I am the doctor aboard Enterprise, the Starfleet ship where T'Pol and Hoshi serve."

"He also got me out of jail" Enoikoawn added.

"Yes, but how do I know you're a friend of Tee-paw and Aw-shee?" the alien insisted.

Phlox had to stop and consider. First, it took him a few seconds to sort the sounds out into the names he knew. Then he had to admit she was right, after all. Given everything that had happened, he could as well be yet another party intent on finding the women and not in their best interest. All of a sudden he had an idea. He beamed at the woman as he sorted through his medical scanner, looking for the picture… there, he got it, thanks to Trip's love affair with the camera, a picture of the three of them just before they beamed down to Nint, dressed in Verkael civvies, Hoshi smiling, him beaming, and T'Pol looking uncomfortably at the camera. Still, there was no doubt the three of them were not enemies.

Enodreiwn took the offered scanner, looked at the picture for a while, then back at him "They were telling the truth" she said softly.

Phlox looked at her in surprise. If she had doubts about what they were saying all along, how come she had provided them shelter and protected them from the Nints? She seemed to read his thoughts "They were acting like Dalgorts" she said, obviously enough of an answer in her book, though Phlox knew he was going to have to chew on that one for a while.

Meanwhile Enoikoawn was following his own train of thought. "Do you still have what I brought you?" he asked.

She motioned with her head towards the corner where a bunch of things were haphazardly tossed together "They thought the wigs and clothes were mine."

Wigs? Clothes? Phlox was watching them, wondering what they were talking about.

"What about the litpadds?"

Wordlessly, Enodreiwn got up from the stool, turned to the cabinet behind her and pulled out a bag of grain cakes. Enoikoawn's mane raised slightly, why would she serve food now? Without saying a word, Enodreiwn put the bag of grain cakes on the table, opened it and reached inside. She pulled out the two litpadds and set them on the table. Phlox was watching uncomprehendingly. Enodreiwn turned to Enoikoawn "It was close. They took the bag, but didn't think it may have more than grain cakes. They just wanted to look behind it" she explained.

Enoikoawn's mane raised in acute amusement. Phlox had no idea what they were planning, but that was not why he had come "Do you know where they are?" he asked.

Enodrewin turned to him. "I do not" she admitted softly.

xx

High up above the Verkael world, a starship requested the coordinates for a geostationary orbit. The Verkael technician who was manning the spatial berths allotment routinely generated a number from the berthing algorithm, then looked up at the screen to provide the coordinates. And pushed his stool back by a yard in shock. He had never seen such a huge ship, much bigger than even the Starfleet flagship. This one was shaped like a lance going through a bull's eye. The Verkael technician stammered the coordinates out while his yellow mane stood on end.

As soon as the communication was over, he sent a littext to the Verkael representative to the Overarching Council. Something told him that was one of those times when alerting the higher ups was warranted. He couldn't read the characters of the starship name but fortunately a translation was provided as part of the berthing manifest. He added it as a footnote to its littext 'The Forge'. He had no idea what that referred to.

The Verkael representative accepted the littext, and then sighed, her mane deflated. It was already bad enough that she had to deal with Admiral Duprovski on a daily basis, now there was a Vulcan ship in orbit. Most of her days were going to be spent placating and explaining, first the one then the other. And they still had no clue where the aliens were, their agent had lost their trace. She would have to explain to the Vulcans that that was not a bad thing or the Nints would have captured the aliens and most likely killed them 'during an unsuccessful escape attempt'. Duprovski had already not reacted very well to the news. Or the explanation. She rued the day they had called Starfleet for help.

She didn't know much about Vulcans but every other species she knew was a little bit afraid of them. She turned to her assistant "Let the staff know whenever the Vulcans try to make contact to say that I am in a meeting." She had always carefully avoided anything that could be a little bit scary and she was not about to stop now. She didn't know how long she could avoid talking to them but if they were as polite and considerate as Starfleet, it could be a while.

xx

Phlox stared nervously at the empty blackness, willing T'Pol and Hoshi to materialize in the headbeam of the hovercraft. But nobody came.

He had been at the intersection for hours already, with Enodreiwn blinking her headbeam twice every so often, a silent call into the night that wasn't finding its target. He went once more over the events of the past few days, as he had done several times already. It anchored him in the present, in the reality of what was versus the imaginary of what he hoped to be.

"So you came here with the guards?" he asked, again.

She eyed him as if she knew he was trying to snare her into some lie, some untruth of her own doing. But there were no lies to be told. What she said was what happened, no more, no less.

"I told the leader of the guards that I was to pick them up two days ago, on a pre-arranged signal. They already had the flight chart of the hovercraft. I knew that if I didn't give him something real, he would never give up and I would end up in jail or dead. And if I was in jail or dead, there would be nobody to help Tee-Paw and Aw-Shee get out of Nint."

Phlox nodded again, like he had the other three times she told the story. It had taken a fair amount of forward thinking for her to realize she was critical to their survival. And it more than excused her giving up the location where she had dropped them. He reminded himself once again that she had no choice. The guards had access to the hovercraft flight data, they would have figured out where the vessel went anyway.

And it was a good thing she hadn't known exactly where they went. Somehow he had a feeling that if she had known, things might have ended very differently.

From the drop point, T'Pol and Hoshi could have gone ten, twenty or thirty miles to one of the canyons bordering the delta. He mentally computed, ten miles would be two hours walk, thirty miles would be six. Enodreiwn had told him Hoshi was pregnant, T'Pol was not. T'Pol would not make Hoshi walk back and forth every night to find out if Enodreiwn was there. She would come alone. They were waiting for T'Pol. For all he knew, she would run the ten miles each way as a warm-up exercise.

' _T'Pol, where are you_?' Phlox wished he was a telepath, could project his thoughts, perhaps be heard by T'Pol. But nobody came and the night was silent.

It was past the midpoint of the night when he finally accepted that T'Pol would not be coming that night. Phlox was dejected. To come so far and be so near, and still so far from the goal. But nobody would come tonight, and the next day Enoikoawn would bring him back to the governor. They had no choice, or else they would be killed. And as Enodreiwn put it, if they were dead there would be two less people to help T'Pol and Hoshi get off Nint.


	29. Nint Hemo

xx

T'Pol glanced at the ceiling. She couldn't see outside but she knew the night had fallen. She was supposed to be at the rendezvous point, waiting to see if Enodreiwn came back, like she had supposed to be for the past two days, but Hoshi was too sick to be left alone. The fever had peaked but was showing no sign of abating.

The concern occupying her current thoughts was the pain. Hoshi was screaming in agony. She was only twenty weeks along, there would be another month before the child would be born. Initially, T'Pol had thought that Hoshi was having the baby prematurely. It would be bad, but survivable. But an examination of Hoshi's abdomen had revealed no sign of contraction. Whatever was going on was not related to labor. Which meant that T'Pol had no idea what may be happening, and no tools to guide her.

She found Dr. Phlox coming to her mind in a way that made him seem almost real, as if he were in close proximity. But the doctor was millions of lightyears away, aboard Enterprise, and he would not be coming to help with a diagnosis or a cure.

Another moan from Hoshi ended in a strangled cry. Was the baby dying? Was it killing her? There were pharmaceutical compounds in the medical lab that could take care of the pain. But their effect on a pregnant woman was unknown and she couldn't let herself experiment on the ensign.

T'Pol looked at Hoshi, taking in the short hair plastered against her skull by sweat, the pallid color. Hoshi moaned again, arching her back, eyes wide from pain and anxiety until the moan transformed into a scream. T'Pol took one step forward, positioning herself close to the medibed, and administered a Vulcan nerve pinch, interrupting Hoshi's scream midway.

The silence was a relief. Now if she could just figure out what was going on and what to do about it.

xx

Enoikoawn was waiting for them in the eating chamber, sitting on a stool by the eating table. Just from the weight of Phlox and Enodreiwn's footsteps, he knew they had been unsuccessful. His mane rose in commiseration.

They all sat around the table, each deep in his or her own thoughts. Phlox finally looked up at Enodreiwn. He couldn't help wondering about her. She claimed to be against what her people thought and how they felt, but in the meantime her son was a Nint guard. She had given up the rendezvous point to the Nints. He couldn't help the feeling she may be lying. Did she actually meet up with T'Pol and Hoshi and deliver them to the Nints?

"Why didn't you help the guards?" he asked "There was nothing in it for you not to. Why did you put yourself at risk for two aliens?"

Enodreiwn's mane lifted slightly and he knew he had struck close to the truth. She had not been quite forthright in her story. He waited while she visibly collected her thoughts.

Finally, she looked straight at him, trying to frame an answer that would help him understand how she felt. She started ploddingly, stopping every few words "What the guards did was not right. I would have told them everything if they had asked, these were only aliens. But they didn't ask. They didn't ask to enter my house, they didn't ask to look around. They came and they took. And then the leader hit me. And I told him where to find Tee-Paw and Aw-Shee. And still he kept hitting me."

She stopped, swallowing back tears. After a while she started talking again "I thought about it when we were waiting for them in the hovercraft. The aliens never harmed me but the Nints did. I blinked the headbeam twice, like we had agreed. And that's when I decided that I would not help find them. And I blinked the headbeam a third time."

She glanced over at Enoikoawn, whose mane was showing he was very upset "I want to fight them. I want to do what you do". She extended a hand as if she was going to pat Phlox's arm reassuringly, recoiled at the thought of the contact. "I will go back to the rendezvous point" she told him. "They will come back."

Phlox looked silently back at her, thinking how the most ordinary people were often capable of the most courageous acts. He crossed his hands on the table, leaning over them. "You have to find them," he said. He took a deep breath, pushed off from the table and started pacing around the room. "You have to go back every night until you do." He stopped, leaned on the table, staring at the two Nints "Having the baby will kill Hoshi."

Phlox put a hand up when he saw their disbelieving stares. "When a Nint baby is born" he explained "it cuts through the birth pouch with the birthing claws. The birth pouch heals naturally and the birthing claws fall off by the time the baby turns one. Human women don't have a birth pouch" Phlox privately thought that neither did Vulcans, but he didn't have to explain about that. "The birth pouch is on the inside of them, not on the outside. When the Nint baby needs to come out and cuts through the birth pouch, it will also cut through the mother's body and kill her." That was how simple he could make it without going into anatomical details that went over his audience's head.

Enodreiwn's mane had gone up a full inch. She was looking at Phlox in shock. He leaned over to her "You have to go back every night until you find them. Hoshi may only have two weeks left."

Enodreiwn nodded. "We will find her" he promised. Neither realized he had spoken for both of them.

xx

"Here" Archer leaned over to refill Reed's glass. The Tactical Officer was spending a lot of time in his quarters these days, where they could endlessly go over the terse communiqués from Starfleet and armchair-quarterback recent developments.

"To the Vulcans" Malcolm raised his glass and downed it.

Archer had to chuckle. After hearing that Phlox had to go to Nint and take care of one of the higher-ups who still wouldn't help bring the women back, the thought of a Surak-class starship dropping by for a quick hello was the sweetest news there had been.

If he had not been a captain, he could have expressed his frank enjoyment at the situation that the Dalgorts found themselves in. But he was a Starfleet captain, and Starfleet was one of the organizations feeling the warmth of Vulcan's breath on the back of their necks, so his amusement had to be tempered.

"We still don't know if they can do more than we were able to do" he reminded Reed.

The weapons officer burped in response and pointed at an unseen enemy on the far horizon "Yeah, but the Vulcans won't pussyfoot around. They'll just drop in, throw a few bombs if they have to, grab T'Pol and Hoshi, and bring them back. And then they'll explain to the Dalgorts that it was the logical thing to do."

Reed sat contemplating his glass, twirling it as if disappointed it was empty. He went on "they don't give a hoot about military interests or commercial interests or other aliens' feelings about each other or not stepping on those aliens' feelings." He burped again. "Us included".

Archer shook his head in amusement, his Tactical Officer was definitely soused. Archer leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling. He knew there must be a flaw in Malcolm's plan, otherwise Starfleet would have done exactly that. Right?

xx

Hoshi opened her eyes, looking at the pattern of the curved ceiling. It reminded her of someplace she had been before. But where was that? She abruptly remembered where they were, in the squat building that occupied so many of her nightmares. The memory was pushed away by another, more bitter, realization. She was in one of the medical chambers she remembered so well and so painfully from her time at the camp. Why was she there? She sat up suddenly, still in somewhat of a fog.

And found herself staring into the eyes of T'Pol.

"Ensign" the Vulcan said, imperturbably.

"Where am I? What happened?" Hoshi grabbed the blanket that had been covering her, trying to use it as a shield from the room and from the memories.

"You do not remember?" the Vulcan asked.

Hoshi shook her head "I remember that we were hiding in the lower levels of the camp headquarters. But why am I here, in this chamber? Last I remember you went to meet Enodreiwn and I was waiting for you!"

T'Pol nodded reassuringly. "That was a few days ago. You have been sick, but it seems that it resolved itself successfully. How do you feel?"

Hoshi felt like replying she has never felt better. Except for feeling very hungry she wasn't tired at all. She noticed that she was still pregnant. It looked like the illness had not been enough to threaten the fetus. "I am fine" she said. Gosh, she was started to sound like a Vulcan. "What happened?"

T'Pol straightened up "It seems the fetus is making a protein that the human body is not accustomed to. Fortunately the protein does not cross the placental barrier. Your body reacted violently at first but then seems to have been able to accommodate. Can you stand?"

Could she stand? Hoshi pretty much jumped off the medibed as a demonstration.

"Good, now we need to get you food" T'Pol left the room, obviously expecting Hoshi to follow her. Which didn't give the Ensign much choice, especially as she suddenly had a yearning for grain cakes. She was about to roll her eyes at the Vulcan's back when it dawned on her that if T'Pol had been there the moment she woke up, she must not have left her side the whole time. Probably not even to eat. Which left Hoshi feeling impressed, grateful and petty all at once.

How the emotionless Vulcan managed to always evoke a plethora of emotions in her was something she would never fully understand


	30. Bloodwork

Enodreiwn stopped the hovercraft's engine and landed on the exact same spot as she had the day before, and for the three days before that. As she had promised the alien doctor, she had been coming every night since he left. She wondered if something had happened to Tee-Paw and Aw-Shee. Perhaps they were stuck someplace where no one could hear them, unable to come back. She chased the thoughts from her head, they were not helpful.

All of a sudden she realized she had forgotten about the headbeam, and she carefully flashed it twice. And then she waited again. She would flash the headbeam two more times before heading back to the compound. This would be the fourth day in a row. They had another ten days after that, and then it would be too late for Hoshi.

xx

"So, that's where you've been hiding!"

Phlox would know that voice anywhere. "Trip!" he turned around and gave the engineer a heartfelt embrace. "What are you doing here?!"

"I could ask you the same, doctor" Trip replied, "and you'd probably give me the same answer."

"When did you arrive?"

"My transport just pulled in this morning. I saw you have some large visitors."

Phlox chuckled at that. The Vulcan starship dwarfed every other ship around the planet, a fact that wasn't lost on the Overarching Council. He had seen Dojtoarv but briefly since he had been back from Nint, and the Verkael doctor had told him in passing that all the Dalgort races were now beating on Nint's door pressing them to surrender the aliens, and that without the Vulcans even having said a word yet. All of Dalgort was apprehensively waiting to see what they would do, well aware that the presence of a Surak-class starship meant the Vulcans were not amused.

Trip became serious. "I understand you went to Nint?"

Phlox's smile disappeared "Yes, and I met with that woman, Enodreiwn, thanks for providing her location, I understand you're the one who told Starfleet."

Trip nodded, "T'Pol…" he stopped himself. Phlox nodded in understanding.

"When did you get back?" Trip asked.

"Three days ago already." Phlox shook his head. "Still nothing. Our agents on Nint keep reporting no sightings. Enodreiwn is looking every day" Phlox continued. "Eventually, they'll come out of hiding." He didn't add that eventually couldn't be soon enough. Hoshi only had ten days left, per his calculations. He wasn't sure that Trip knew about the danger of Hoshi's pregnancy and he didn't think it was a good idea to tell the engineer. Not on the first day.

Trip was looking at Phlox with a look of surprise. "Can we reel it back a bit, Doc? I have a feeling I'm not up to speed on some of what's been happening."

xx

Hoshi's initial burst of energy had been a temporary lull and it subsided way too quickly, leaving her to heal slowly from what had ailed her. At least she was no longer in the medical room, which meant she could relax somewhat. And every day she felt closer to normal. As her body healed, memories slowly came back from where they had sunk in the recesses of her mind, like so many air bubbles gently drifting upwards. One of those bubbles suddenly brought Hoshi upward in the middle of the night and a restless dream. She had just remembered about Enodreiwn and the rendezvous point. They were supposed to go back every day until Enodreiwn gave the signal the coast was clear. How many days had it been? And why hadn't T'Pol said anything? Hell, why hadn't she gone there already?!

She got up, heedless of the hour, needing to address the issue right there and then with her CO, and took a brisk walk to the old camp director's office, which T'Pol had appropriated as her quarters. She barged in without knocking on the door. The Vulcan was sitting in a meditation pause on the low couch, eyes closed, wrapped in Enodreiwn wrapcoat even though the temperature was far from cold even for a Vulcan. "Light" Hoshi called, and the litlamps obediently illuminated the room. T'Pol looked at Hoshi silently, waiting for the Ensign to explain why she had barged in her room in the middle of the night.

"Enodreiwn" Hoshi started and then stopped, out of breath from the sudden rush down the hall right upon awakening.

T'Pol closed her eyes briefly. She had been waiting on the ensign remembering as a sign that she was well enough to go to the rendezvous point. "We can talk about it in the morning" she said. "Now perhaps we can both complete our rest period?"

Hoshi nodded, suddenly feeling foolish. She could have waited for the morning, rather than barge in, it was night anyway, nobody was going anywhere. "I'm sorry to have bothered you" she said.

"There is no need to apologize, Ensign." When she realized Hoshi was not leaving, T'Pol looked up again "Yes?"

Hoshi found herself closing the couple of yards that separated her from T'Pol, sitting on the couch next to her. She had the passing thought that a few months ago she would never have dared do as much, frozen in place by the emotional distance implicit in T'Pol's manner of speech. Now she realized that there was more to her than met the ear.

"It's just, do you think she'll be there? Do you think it's all going to work out?" she found herself wanting reassurance, but the reassurance of real possibilities, not an empty 'everything will be fine', and she realized the Vulcan was the perfect partner for that.

"We have to believe Enodreiwn will come to the appointed place as soon as she in no longer in a compromised situation." T'Pol replied. "As far as this all going to work out, even though our current situation is not optimal by any means, we have managed to survive a breeding camp, a trek through the mudflats, and a prize being put on our heads. It seems things have been working out indeed."

Hoshi smiled. It was true, so much of it was a question of perspective. She quickly got up from the couch, mindful of having disturbed the Vulcan and intent on seeing her way back to bed. In her haste, she unwittingly picked up a corner of the wrapcoat around T'Pol, pulling it off from around her shoulders. Both Hoshi and T'Pol reached out and grabbed the coatwrap at the same time though T'Pol had to lean forward so far that the relatively short sleeve of her Nint outfit could not cover her entire arm.

Hoshi gasped and stared in shock at the Commander, who brought her arm back to her lap in embarrassment. "What are those?!" Hoshi exclaimed.

T'Pol eyed her for a few seconds, then decided that an attempt at distracting the ensign had very little chance of succeeding. Instead, she answered the question "It's nothing."

"That's not nothing!" It was obvious Hoshi was not going to leave room without an answer. T'Pol retreated back to the scientific side of things. "Technically, these are hematomas-"

"I know what these are!"

"I was going to say" T'Pol had the same measured tone as always "that like all hematomas they are the product of the leakage of blood from blood vessels into the surrounding tissues." She stopped there and waited for Hoshi to complete the blanks. But Hoshi just looked at her, waiting for the rest of the explanation. After a while, T'Pol realized she didn't have a choice but to go on "I believe that the lack of proper nutrition has caused a deficiency in one of the factors necessary for coagulation of copper-based blood."

Hoshi stared at the Vulcan without saying a word. _She knew it_! She had known it since the very first day, that they would end up paying somehow for the extremely restrictive diet T'Pol was forced into. "How can we treat it?" she asked. "Is there anything we can do other than diet?"

"A dietary change would be beneficial" T'Pol admitted "though a transfusion would provide faster results."

Hoshi took a sharp breath between her teeth. Neither of those was even a remote possibility. It looked like getting to Enodreiwn was becoming an emergency. "I'll go to the rendezvous point tomorrow night" she said.

"You shall not." The rejoinder was quick as lightning. "You are pregnant and you are just recovering from a serious illness. For you to walk twelve point eight miles to the rendezvous point, and possibly back, would put your health in jeopardy." Hoshi was grateful T'Pol didn't add 'and the health of the child'. At the same time, she stared at her, unseeing, mulling over the possibilities. T'Pol must have perceived what she was thinking about, shook her head "The risk is too great," she said.

"What about the risk to your health?" Hoshi retorted "It's not like you are in perfect shape either."

"That is correct, Ensign, but what I am suffering from is not life-threatening. It is no more than a passing inconvenience, which won't become paroxysmal on account of physical exertion."

Hoshi snorted, crossed her arms in defiance. "Unfortunately for you, Commander, I have some knowledge about clotting disorders. I can sit here and talk to you of bleeding in the joints or bleeding on the brain. Going to the rendezvous point may have an adverse impact on my health and the pregnancy, but it won't kill me." T'Pol eyed her in silence.

"It seems we're at an impasse" Hoshi went on. "I'm not going to let you compromise your health on account of protecting me." It had already happened more often than she wanted to count. "We can always draw straws" she added, daring her CO to try and shut her down.

"Hoshi, I would let you know if I were not able to get to the rendezvous point or if it presented an extreme risk of danger to my health" T'Pol finally said, "neither of which is the case. We do not know how long it will be before we meet up with Enodreiwn again. If my health deteriorates further, you will go instead."

Hoshi eventually nodded her acceptance. Yet somehow she had the feeling she had been outmaneuvered. She tried to figure out where and how as she walked back to her room.

T'Pol sat for a few minutes after Hoshi left, thinking. Hoshi was in no shape to walk twelve miles to the rendezvous point and another twelve miles back if anything happened. It was doubtful that she herself could make the trek unscathed, meaning she may only have one shot at reaching the rendezvous point before her condition deteriorated to the point she no longer could. Given Enodreiwn's psychological make-up, all things being equal, there was only a 23.44% chance she would be at the rendezvous point on any given day. She needed to think of ways to increase the odds of a meeting before she went to the rendezvous point, or plan accordingly. That required a clear mind, and a clear mind required she meditate.


	31. Rendezvous (TnT's White Space Redux)

T'Pol looked in surprise at the white space. She had not been experiencing any heightened sensory state that would explain how she could be in the white space when Trip was millions of lightyears away. Unless the white space had been summoned by him.

She had a momentary feeling of alarm at the thought of the psychic energy it would require for him to summon the white space from that far away. Only death or a near-death experience would be powerful enough. Did something happen to him? Was he dying? A wave of panic rose through her as she frantically scanned the room for any sign of Trip. Where was he? He had to be there. It didn't make sense that she was in the white space alone when she was not the one who had called it.

Finally she saw him, lying down in a corner. She rushed to his side, still wrapped in the heavy coat, falling to her knees next to him. His arm was in a sling. He smiled when he saw her though pain was etched on his face and she looked all over for the disastrous injuries she was sure he had suffered.

"I'm alright" Trip sensed through the bond the anxiety coursing through her, hastened to add "I'm on Verkael." She stopped, stared at him in intense surprise. "On Verkael?!"

"Yes, remember I told you I would find you. Here I am." He smiled his most boyish smile at her, having a strong feeling she was not going to be very pleased with him when she found out what he had done.

She sat back on her heels, watching him with a mix of surprise and suspicion. He could sense her anxiety was starting to smolder into the first embers of anger. "Explain."

And Trip knew he'd get it. Might as well get it over quickly. He did kind'a felt like the biggest fool around – which to be quite frank, he was. "Well, huh…" she stared at him unblinkingly. Those eyes. He just couldn't deal with those eyes. They drove him mad with distraction. "Huh, your hair is growing back" he said again.

"Continue" T'Pol tersely said. Which was ironic considering he had pretty much not said anything.

"I needed to reach out to you in the white space, and you know how it is with me I can't call it on demand, it kind of comes when it wants to" he quickly said. She nodded. "I wanted to tell you Enodreiwn is looking for you, she's been at the rendezvous point every night for the past four days. A lot has happened since you were there, but she'll be there tonight again. It's safe to go back."

"Hoshi has been sick but I am going back to the rendezvous point tomorrow." T'Pol ventured. She wondered what had happened that Enodreiwn had been back at the rendezvous point every night, against all probabilities. Still, the news was welcome and she would be able to hike to the rendezvous point in time for nightfall.

She went back to eyeing Trip with suspicion. As an expert in the art of evasion, she knew when someone else was doing the evading. "You haven't explained" she prompted again.

Trip knew he was done for. "Hey, I'm an engineer, okay. I know that the times when the white space comes pretty much as expected are times when I am sick or hurt or something bad is happening." She raised an eyebrow at him, as if daring him to say what he was going to say next. "So I kind of engineered getting hurt, because I figured it would make me create the white space. Phlox patched humpty dumpty together again but the most important thing is you're here."

Except she wasn't. Trip reached out to touch her and she had already sprung to her feet, towering over him like a crazed diva. "How could you put yourself at risk?!"

"It was the logical choice" he said in a small voice. He hoped she'd buy it.

"I failed to see the logic in hurting yourself as a means of communication!" Trip hadn't seen T'Pol upset that often but he could tell this was one for the record books. She started pacing the width of the white space, still wrapped in that heavy coat of hers. Trip just eyed her, not daring say a word, and feeling very foolish. He knew that she would eventually calm down and forgive him. She always did. But it might take a few weeks.

He reached out to her with his good arm. "Come on, baby, I'm sorry." She stopped dead in her tracks, closed her eyes. She looked like she would be mollified. But the white space started dissipating around them, and the last sight Trip had was of her standing there, hesitation written on her face. He wondered what the deal was with the coat.

xx

The first three miles went as expected, T'Pol keepin a stady gait as she jogged to the rendez-vous. Then, perhaps not unexpectedly, right around mile four the first twinges of pain started in her knees. The pain inexorably crept downward and her ankles were hotbeds of sharp needles. She adjusted her gait and speed, straightening her mental shields, separating her mind from her body so that the pain would not slow her down. But if she could manage the pain, she could not reduce the swelling of her knees and ankles and by the end she was hobbling, the pain pushing sweat on her brow. She stripped the heavy coat off, letting the cool air chill her. Her thermoregulators were shot, she was quite unable to maintain any semblance of normal body temperature even with the exertion. She suspected the steady and slow leakage of blood cells into her joint cavities was the reason.

Using the coat as a buffer, she fell to her stomach. The engine noise of the approaching hovercraft roused her from the light healing trance she had fallen into. She waited for the requisite number of flashes, then rose awkwardly and walked stiffly to the hovercraft.

Enodreiwn let out a small scream as the door to the hovercraft opened unexpectedly. The thin alien stepped in, completely wrapped in her wrapcoat, and Enodreiwn's mane raised in pleasure and excitement "Tee-Paw! I am so happy to see you."

T'Pol sat on the side bench, eyes closed, breathing fast and shallowly. Enodreiwn silently reflected she looked quite green. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes "We need to go get Hoshi. She's in the center canyon."

Enodreiwn froze. Tee-Paw was talking about flying into the delta. Nobody flew into the delta. It was forbidden. T'Pol saw her change in behavior and correctly surmised its origins. "It's ok, I will fly the hovercraft there. You can wait for me here." She reassured Enodreiwn.

Enodreiwn closed her eyes, willed her mane into position. Yes, flying to the delta was forbidden, but it was one more wrong thing the government had done, cutting people's access to the canyons. She looked at T'Pol "If you fly, it's okay. I will stay."

T'Pol nodded and sat behind the commands, still wrapped in the heavy cloak. Enodreiwn wondered how she could not be too hot in that. They flew silently for twenty minutes in the dark of the night and then the hovercraft slowed down next to a ruin. Enodreiwn looked around, amazed that there would even be ruins to be found. T'Pol opened the hatch "I will be back with Hoshi" she announced and slid into the darkness of the night, still wrapped up in the coat.

Ten minutes later Hoshi stepped into the hovercraft, at Enodreiwn's great joy. She noticed the thin figure made thinner by the protruding belly, the pale, pale skin. According to the alien doctor there was only one week left before the baby would be born and Hoshi would die. Enodreiwn realized she didn't want the small alien to die. It was simple as that. She needed to help her get off Nint.

T'Pol stepped back in behind Hoshi. This time, Enodreiwn didn't let her take the controls. She raised the hovercraft's nose, pointed at the compound, and they took off. Enoikoawn would be waiting for them at the compound. He had been staying there since the doctor left, and neither of them were in any big hurry to see him leave.

xx

Phlox stared at the litscreen, thinking very much that there must be some mistake. He had no representative capacity on Verkael.

The Vulcan looking back at him didn't seem fazed in the slightest. "I am Captain T'Valek of the starship The Forge. I understand you are a Starfleet doctor?"

Phlox nodded, unsure why she would call him "Huh, yes, I am the Chief Medical Officer aboard Enterprise." Part of him wondered if this was a house call and if they were going to ask him to come aboard their ship and heal someone. He shook the idea out of his head – The Forge probably had some of the finest medical equipment around.

Like her brethren, the Vulcan captain did not waste time on niceties "The Verkael representative to the Overarching Council has been actively avoiding my calls. Since you are on Verkael and Starfleet is an ally, I will ask you to convey Vulcan's… position… to the Council." How nice of her to use the word 'position', Phlox thought to himself, though there was little doubt as to what the euphemism meant.

Still, he didn't hide his surprise. Dojtaorv had told him that the Vulcans had not communicated with the Dalgorts but had neglected to say that it was because the representative had studiously avoided all communication.

He cleared his throat "I will be … honored… to convey Vulcan's position to the Council, but you have to realize I hold very little sway with the Council, hmm? I am not sure that they'll listen to me any more than they were willing to talk to you."

T'Valek nodded. "We understand that the Dalgorts present an interesting mix of narrow-mindedness and duplicity." _Ouch_ , Phlox thought, Vulcans were never one to measure their words, especially when they were, as he suspected of T'Valek and the rest of the crew on The Forge, either indignant or royally pissed.

Still, it took him a while to feel back in control of his facial muscles after T'Valek had finished giving the very concise and arguably brutally clear communication he was to relay to the Council. Dalgort was, effective immediately, off-limits to all of Vulcan. Part of Phlox was horrified at the far-reaching consequences of such a declaration, which the Dalgort people would not fully realize until they woke up much later in the future and realized how much this had hurt them, economically, technologically, and reputationally. Another part of him understood Vulcan's position to be that if the Dalgorts were going to be intransigent they would find Vulcan to be intransigent and a half.

"Is that a definitive decision" Phlox heard himself ask, "or is there some flexibility if the Council decides they would like to talk to you?" He patted himself on the back. Nice way of asking for a do-over.

"The first step for the Council to re-engage a dialogue is to hand our citizen back." T'Valek replied. Phlox privately thought that their citizen was also a Starfleet officer but that didn't seem to be of much relevance to Vulcan, there was very little thought given to how Starfleet might also want its officer back. "After that, if the Council wants to re-establish communication, they can try contacting us." T'Valek was dripping scorn. Still, she left the diplomatic door ajar "We at least will respond."

The communication was cut off and Phlox stared at the dark litscreen for a couple of minutes before he quickly got up. He needed to find Dojtoarv.


	32. Home Again

Enodreiwn brought the hovercraft down to the compound, turned to the aliens. "We're home" she exclaimed, thrilled to have them back. Hoshi stood up, saw T'Pol wince as she got up and whirled on her "You got hurt!"

"I did not get hurt" T'Pol replied. Hoshi's first thought was that the Vulcan was being entirely too concrete, her second thought was that she was doing it on purpose. She didn't have the patience to parse it out. "It doesn't matter how it happened" she protested, "end result is you're limping." That, T'Pol didn't have a response to. Hoshi pressed her advantage "What happened?" T'Pol looked down and to the side "You may have been correct about the possibility of bleeding in the joints. Though I think this is more likely the result of physical stress from hiking to the rendezvous point."

 _Oh, great, this was just what we needed_ , Hoshi thought. They were really going to stick out like a sore thumb at the hoverport, her pregnant and her companion limping. "How bad is it? Can you walk?" she asked.

T'Pol straightened "I can suppress the pain, but there may be mechanical challenges." Hoshi nodded in understanding, a swollen joint only had so much range of motion. She stopped mid-stride "And how were you planning to walk back if you didn't meet up with Enodreiwn?"

T'Pol's eyes widened "I had not thought of that."

Hoshi shook her head. She got out of the hovercraft first, turned around and helped T'Pol step down. She was no expert by any means but based on the awkwardness with which the Commander managed the high step from hovercraft to ground, she suspected her joints must be badly swollen. The wrapcoat provided an impenetrable shield to any visual assessment and knowing the Vulcan she had a feeling it wasn't going to come off any time soon.

The Nint governor had been true to his word. No Nint guards were waiting for them at the compound, or came by to check on Enodreiwn or inquire about the aliens. Soon they were seated in the eating chamber with their two Nint hosts.

"You have to leave tomorrow" Enoikoawn's tone was uncompromising.

"But that's just in a few hours" Enodreiwn protested.

"They can't wait. Their arrival back here will soon become known. We're probably being spied upon right now." Enoikoawn's tone brooked no argument.

"But they don't have tickets, and that's not enough time to get ready" Enodreiwn was still opposed to the idea.

Enoikoawn shook his head in response "Starfleet has had two seats booked on the hovercraft every day for the longest time. I even know the row and seat number. If we wait, there is a risk the Nint guards will come back. The governor gave his word, but he will take it back just as easily if he realizes he can score a coup for himself politically by finding the two aliens." He looked at Hoshi "You really need to get back to your doctor right away."

Hoshi's eyes grew wider. She wondered if her pregnancy was the reason Enodreiwn and he were so concerned with her well-being. But what mattered was that they were finally within hours of leaving Nint, and once again there was a risk. She just wouldn't be able to deal with it if their plans were interrupted. "What do we have to do?" she asked. "I'll do anything to leave today."

xxx

The Verkael Representative to the Overarching Council was walking as fast as she could back to her office, panting. This was great news, and it could possibly save her homeworld's relationship with the Vulcans. But she needed to get to them through unofficial channels so that it didn't look like the Overarching Council went knocking on Vulcan's door. "Get me Dojtaorv on the litscreen" she threw at her assistant as she walked in her office, then sat on the low couch, waiting.

x

"Yes?" Phlox looked up from his monitor at Dojtaorv, wondering when he was going to be able to get some work done, with his medical office caught in a tug-of-war between Dalgort and all of Vulcan. Breaking the news that the Vulcans' had reached out to him had already taken up half his evening the prior day and he wasn't looking forward to a repeat, this time having to approach the Vulcans with the response from the Overarching Council. How did he ever get involved as a go-between? He was starting to find the Dalgorts confounding in their constant underhandedness and the simple logic of Vulcan was looking very refreshing.

"There are news!" Dojtaorv was excited but Phlox was had seen too much of Dojtaorv's excitement these days. He just waited for the news that was sure to follow. "We've heard from our agent on Nint. They have the aliens."

That got Phlox's attention. "Who has the aliens?" he remembered to ask, with these people one never knew.

"That woman, Enodreiwn, they're at her place." Now, Phlox was getting excited also. "And?" he asked, looking with narrowed eyes at the Verkael doctor "What do you want me to do?" He was starting to get a sense of Dalgort's ethics and value system.

x

Admiral Dubrovski sat back in his chair with a sigh as soon as Phlox was no longer on the vidscreen. Finally, some progress. He called to his assistant "Get me the Verkael Representative to the Overarching Council!" This time, there was no room for mistakes. He was going to tell her that if anything, anything, happened and the Starfleet officers were not extracted as per plans, Starfleet was going to send a starship over and take matters in their own hands.

Truth was that with the Vulcan starship already in orbit around Dalgort, Starfleet could not seem to be taking a less than active role in getting their officers off the planet. It would be a serious loss of face if the Vulcans did in a few weeks what Starfleet had been unable to do for the past five months.

Never mind that Vulcan's was probably here only because one of the officers had some level of kinship with T'Pau and Soval. He wondered who had let her into Starfleet in the first place.

x

"Can you believe they now want us back to Dalgort!" Archer's tone expressed the contempt and frustration he felt. To have been relegated to the far corners of the galaxy for god knows how long while his friends were lost on the planet and then the Vulcans showed up and all of a sudden Starfleet finally found its spine and decided that they would no longer take things lying down. Except that technocrats like Dubrovski had no idea what that meant exactly and all they would do was model whatever the Vulcans did. In the end, Archer didn't care, in a few weeks he would be back on Dalgort and that was good enough for him.

"Typical deskbound cowboys" Reed commented back. Archer glanced sideways at him, reminding himself to talk to the Tactical Officer about old-U.S. idioms. He turned back to the main screen.

"Ensign Mayweather"

"Yes, sir"

"We're going back to Dalgort, on the double. Maximum speed ahead."

"Aye, aye, sir." It was clear Travis was happy with the new orders.

x

Captain T'Valek nodded at her communications officer, who silently and efficiently put in the hail as required. The Verkael who answered was obviously an assistant. T'Valek refrained from thinning her mouth in distaste. On top of being xenophobic and underhanded, the Dalgorts also engaged in administrative one-upmanship as to who was calling on whom. She was finding it hard to find any redeeming qualities to these people and her report to the High Council would stress the wisdom of refraining from extended contact with the planet.

"Captain T'Valek here, looking to talk with the Verkael Representative to the Overarching Council" she said, letting her voice express contempt. Courage was certainly not the representative's best quality and it was yet to be seen what positive attributes, if any the Verkael might have.

The woman who showed up on the screen tried to look composed and indifferent, though her nervousness was belied by the slight rising of her mane.

"Representative." T'Valek was purposefully curt. As expected, it triggered a stream of communication from the weaker interlocutor.

"You honor us with your presence." T'Valek's eyebrow rose infinitesimally. At least the representative had done her homework. "The Overarching Council is looking forward to establishing full relations with Vulcan once we get over our slight misunderstanding. Most importantly, I am pleased to relay the news that the Vulcan citizen has been located on Nint and efforts are under way as we speak to extract her from the Greater Kingdom of Nint and provide her with the protection of Verkael." The representative smiled, baring her teeth.

T'Valek sighed inwardly. It was highly illogical for the representative to act as if this were news when she was the one who had asked the Denobulan doctor to make contact with The Forge and provide the information so that they would reach out to her.

"When is the extraction happening?" T'Valek asked.

"It is actually planned for this afternoon." The Representative was almost beaming.

T'Valek eyebrows rose. That didn't leave enough time for a parallel Vulcan-led action. She leaned forward in her command chair, clearly signaling that she was delivering an important message "There can be no mistakes or accidents with this. If the Vulcan citizen and the other alien currently on Nint are not recovered by the end of the day we will have no choice but to intervene directly. You can relay our message to the Overarching Council. We will resume communications once our citizen is safely back on Vulcan soil."

The Representative's mane almost flew off her head in reaction. T'Valek briefly closed her eyes and motioned her communications officer to cut the feed off.

Her main officer turned to her "Are we going to let them handle this?" he asked, eyes slightly widened in surprise.

T'Valek turned to him "Have the sensors track every living thing on the planet. I want to know the minute we can locate T'Pol's biosign. We will monitor the situation but we will not intervene unless there is a need to."

"But we could transport them up to the ship as soon as we trace them" her main officer was still perplexed. T'Valek eyed the young man steadily "With the extraction happening in a few hours, there is no time for us to mount an action on Nint soil. Once our people are no longer on Nint, they are relatively safe. At this point we can let the Verkael do the work and take the credit." It was one thing to despise these people; it was another to hurt their pride.

The young man nodded "Logical." T'Valek found herself slightly irritated. Of course, it was logical. What did he expect exactly. "In the meantime, I want our retrieval teams to be ready for an intervention by tonight" she went on. It may not be good policy to hurt the Verkaels' pride, but one did not have to passively stand by either.


	33. Lift-Off

Enoikoawn drove to the hoverport, left the hovercraft in the designated area, and accompanied his passengers through the domed hangar. The two female Nints with him were completely wrapped in travel coats for privacy, only their manes and eyes showing. One was walking slowly with a pronounced limp and the other was pregnant. They were obviously going to Verkael for medical treatment,

Enoikoawn stayed with them through the lengthy interview process while an indifferent bureaucrat registered their answers to the 500-question questionnaire which was mandatory for any Nint leaving the country. The pregnant one gave most of the answers for the two of them, her companion nodding or talking very softly on certain points as needed. Enoikoawn was very pleased with their performance. It looked like they were actually thinking about the questions rather than giving the answers they had learned over the past few hours. Not quite a few hours, it had taken the thin alien only a few minutes to learn them. The rest of the time had been spent going over every step of the process over and over again until they felt as if they had traveled to Verkael before. Once the bureaucrat checked that the questionnaires passed the exceptions filter, he gave them the litdocs that they needed to board the hovercraft and called the next person in line.

Enoikoawn left the interview area with his Nint charges, shepherding them down the corridor to the private examination rooms they had requested on account of medical privacy. There, the corrupt bureaucrat that could no longer refuse to help Enoikoawn, not only because of the steady flow of money he had gotten used to but also because of the long blackmail list of corrupt acts that would send him to jail for the rest of his life if he didn't, waited the regulatory half-hour that would make it seem like he had performed a thorough physical examination before handing them back their litdocs, marked a different color. He hardly looked at them while they waited silently by Enoikoawn's side. If he saw too much, he would know too much, never a good idea.

The next and final stop was the litdocs inspection. After that, the Nint females would be entering the waiting chamber and Enoikoawn would have to go back home. The line was long and the review was slow. Enoikoawn had explained that the government actively dissuaded his citizens from traveling, worried about external influences that would pollute their right-thinking. Spending hours in various levels of inspection and review was one of the deterrents. The Nint females avoided looking at anyone or calling attention to themselves in any way, even though they could have requested priority access. This too had been debated and decided while they were sitting in Enodreiwn's eating chamber.

Enoikoawn knew that the litdocs he provided were spotless, as was the disguise of medical travel coat and fake mane. Thankfully the alients' hair was short enough that the wigs fit easily. He waited with them until they were called to low-lying stools next to the final inspector litdesk. The inspector examined their papers, checking the integrity of the original birth certificates, before he handed them back with the boarding litpadds. The three of them left his desk and proceeded towards the waiting chamber.

They were halfway there when a cry came from the back "Stop! Stop!" The shout resonated behind them. Enoikoawn froze, as did T'Pol and Hoshi. Then Hoshi turned around ever so slightly, as if she was unconcerned but was going to check out anyway what the noise was about. The sound of running footsteps was getting closer. Next to her T'Pol balanced herself on the balls of her feet, leaning ever so slightly into a fighting position in spite of the pain.

An armed guard was running after them down the long hangar. When he saw they had momentarily stopped, he renewed his running. He finally caught up to Hoshi, breathing heavily "The agent forgot to give you the walkway pass". And he handed her a smaller litpadd. She took it with a smile, saying in perfectly accented Nint "why thank you, we would have been looking all over for it."

The guard smiled, taking a careful look at T'Pol, doubly wrapped in the wrapcoat and the travel coat. She inclined her head in acknowledgement and thanks, and the guard turned around and left. He seemed to hesitate, then straightened up again and walked away.

"I told you it would look suspicious" Hoshi whispered to T'Pol. In spite of her entreaties, the Commander had insisted on keeping the wrapcoat. Hoshi had finally desisted, knowing the Vulcan was under the weather and must be even more sensitive to the cold than usual. The Commander nodded in response "Agreed. But there is not much we can do about it now." Hoshi cast a quick glance at her, surprised at the unusual looseness of T'Pol's reply. She must be a lot sicker than she let on.

They turned to Enoikoawn, who was struggling to bring his mane back to a height commensurate to a normal stress level for a travel day. He quickly took leave of them, worried that his mane would signal his agitation to the world and bring unwanted attention to the small group.

Hoshi found the waiting to get aboard the hovercraft agonizing. She was certain she was sweating all the way through her travelcoat, tried to keep still in spite of wanting to fidget, finally pretended to be asleep as a way of avoiding the feeling that everyone was staring at her. She couldn't understand how T'Pol could be so fresh and composed, as if this was a garden variety excursion to a well-known tourist spot. "Perhaps you should look a little bit more anxious" she reproached her. "We're not supposed to be used to going offworld, after all."

She felt more than saw the eyebrow that raised to shoo her away. "There is no reason to be concerned, Ensign. Once the inspection is over, getting onboard is a routine matter."

Hoshi scowled behind the screen of the medical travelcoat. She was pretty certain T'Pol not expecting anything to happen meant that something bad would.

xx

Enodreiwn had not gone with them to the hoverport. If anything happened, she needed to preserve the ability to deny she had been involved. After they left, she took her hovercraft and flew to a point right outside the hoverport, and waited. She waited until she saw Enoikoawn's hovercraft touch down and the three figures walk out. She waited until the commercial hovercraft from Verkael landed at the hoverport. She waited until she saw the three figures step inside the building. She waited for any sign of alarms or other commotion, any running guards, any unusual activity that would have indicated the ruse had been uncovered. But nothing happened except the quiet activity expected of an off-world hub.

Finally, once she saw the hovercraft lift off for Verkael and still nothing had happened, and the night was starting to fall, she peeled herself from her vantage point and returned to the compound. She arrived late at night, suddenly feeling the weight of the missing women. Enoikoawn was there to welcome her, wondering where she had gone. It seemed like the world had finally righted itself, so why did she feel so empty.

xx

The passengers on the hovercraft looked around in surprise, wondering what medical emergency they had on board that the porthospital couldn't wait for the hovercraft to be moored at the Verkael arrival hangar. There had been no inkling during the flight that anything was amiss.

The back doorhatch of the hovercraft sprung open and several Verkael security members came on board. They walked straight to two passengers in the back rows, both wrapped in the long coats of those seeking medical privacy. So that was it. Still, medical travelers didn't usually get VIP treatment. The Nints close to the portholes looked with curiosity as the two figures were whisked away to the porthospital. Then the hovercraft resume its taxying to the arrival pod and they promptly forgot all about the scene.

Surrounded by a phalanx of Verkael guards, T'Pol and Hoshi approached the official-looking porthospital with circumspection, unsure what exactly was in store for them. The guards around them might be Verkael and not Nint, they might have landed at the main Verkael hoverport, but there had been too many unforeseen developments in the past few months for them to relax their guard. T'Pol climbed aboard first, ready to face whatever danger was inside. She heard Hoshi stepping in right behind her, thought the ensign was too close and wouldn't be able to escape if danger was lurking inside.

"Welcome aboard!"

T'Pol turned to the voice, briefly closing her eyes to suppress the emotions that were assaulting her from all sides "Doctor," she simply said. Behind her, Hoshi squealed in delight "Dr. Phlox!" and rushed to his arms. Phlox already has his mediscanner out, was passing it over Hoshi, shaking his head in dismay, then over T'Pol, and scowled. He looked at Dorajtoarv "She needs to be transported to the Vulcan starship right away."

T'Pol's eyebrow rose – so there was a Vulcan starship in orbit. Dorajtoarv was shaking his head back at Phlox, obviously embarrassed but resolved "They have to go through acceptance procedures first. Every passenger on board a Nint hovercraft has to be accounted for. It's a request from the Nint government."

Phlox huffed "May I remind you that they're not Nint citizens and that the Nint government has no idea they're here, hmm?"

Dorajtoarv answered calmly "We created fake Nint identities to cover their extraction. We need to account for the created individuals and report on their arrival."

Phlox's voice rose "Let's not waste any time, then. How come we are not on our way to the administrative offices?" Dorajtoarv nodded and the porthospital slowly lugged away.

xx

The Verkael passengers waiting in the departure hangar didn't pay much attention to the scene unfolding at one end of the hangar. A whole squadron of guards and official-looking Verkaels were standing by one of the wide-outer doors. The doors swung open and a couple of aliens walked in, wrapped in Nint medical travel coats, followed by yet another alien, then more Verkael officals and more Verkael guards. A tall blond alien called to the aliens and pushed his way through the cordon of guards until he was with them, hanging tight to the one on his right and guiding the one on his left with a hand on the small of her back. There was a lull in the forward motion of the group, what looked like some arguing between the aliens, then a guard left and promptly came back with a rolling chair. Nothing else could be seen as the guards formed an impenetrable wall around the group all the way until they disappeared through the doors of the administrative offices.


	34. What's In A Name

T'Pol blinked, passing instantaneously from deep sleep to a state of arousal. For the first time in months, she felt warm and she was not hungry. She looked at the room around her, recognizing the muted colors and sounds of a Vulcan sickbay, remembering their arrival on Verkael, Phlox fussing over them then contacting the Vulcan starship, the strange dissociation of the transporter beam, a Vulcan captain, a gurney. After that her memory became muddled, made of shards of sounds and images that didn't form a whole.

"Do you need help?" she heard the clipped tone of a Vulcan female, probably one of the doctors.

"I know where I'm going" came the reply. T'Pol looked up just in time to see Trip stride in. "You're awake!" he was all smiles, his arm was no longer in a sling. She looked at it with a pointed look. "He shrugged it away "I told you I'd be as good as new in a couple of days. How you're feeling? They had to give you three transfusions to get your levels back where they needed to be. That and all kinds of shots."

"Where's Hoshi?" T'Pol started to sit up. Trip reached over and helped pull her to a fully seated position. She could see the small bruises doting her arms. He pointed at them "Doctors say they'll be gone in a couple of days."

A medical aide came by, greeted Trip as if he had seen him plenty of times before, recorded the medical data beeping on the scanners and upon seeing that T'Pol was up, brought over a very small cup of plomeek soup and left. She eyed the steaming liquid, part of her amazed at the sight, and part of her wondering why the portion was so small.

The aide was nowhere in sight but a doctor approached, nodding at Trip as to a well-known acquaintance. He efficiently set up a line into the catheter T'Pol had not noticed in her shoulder. "We're doing another transfusion" he explained as he was setting it up, "the factor levels are still too low. There is a 66.24% chance you will need a fifth one." He finished, pulled out a hypospray from his pocket and injected it in her neck in one smooth move "Vitamins" he said tersely, then pointed at the bowl of soup "your body needs to reacquaint itself to a variety of foods. If this is well tolerated, we'll increase quantities. Otherwise we'll reduce them, until we can find the right balance."

Having received her authorization for physical contact, he pushed aside the coverlet from her legs, talking as he checked her ankles and knees "The swelling is subsiding, range of motion is substandard but improving. Any pain? No? You should be able to put weight on them starting tomorrow." He drew the cover back, dry and efficient, took his leave. "Commander" he nodded in good-bye, leaving them unsure as to which of them he had saluted.

"What about Hoshi?" T'Pol asked again.

"Hoshi's fine" Trip hastened to reply. "Phlox was able to separate the baby without any damage to either mother or child. Actually, he did it on the ship, but then they had to return to Dalgort right after, something about citizens having to be born on the planet. Officially, that's where he was born."

"He?"

"The child. Hoshi's down on Verkael, under Phlox's care." And that of an armload of nurses, doctors, and diplomats, he thought, but didn't tell her.

"I want to see her" Trip looked at T'Pol in surprise, then realized so much had happened that she needed to see for herself that Hoshi was alive and well. "I'm not sure that the captain of The Forge is going to let you step off Vulcan soil" Trip pointed out "and then there's the small matter of the doctor, you would need a medical release."

His voice was sounding as if it came from the end of a tunnel. She struggled to keep up, heard him say "Ah, yes, I forgot, these transfusions knock the stuffing out of you." She felt him settle her back in bed, and then there was silence.

xx

T'Pol woke up, saw from the difference in the sickbay lighting that it was night. She sat up, noticed that the catheter in her shoulder had been removed, dermaplast was covering the entry points. The transfusions were over. Based on how long she had been out, she figured there had been a fifth transfusion. She vaguely remembered coming to in the afternoon, it had to do with some commotion. Her eyes widened when she realized it had to do with Hoshi. Hoshi was aboard, she could feel her.

She got up, shooting a threatening glare at the "patient has left the medibed" warning that came from the bed. She opened the side unit. The presence of a Vulcan robe gave the silent signal that it was okay for her to be up. She wrapped herself in the robe, the feeling of the fabric under her fingers making her feel like home. Careful of her knees and ankles, she gingerly proceeded towards the privacy chamber.

The door was unlocked and swooshed open when she approached. Hoshi was sitting on her bed, facing the side window, looking out at the stars and golden orb of Dalgort, a litpadd in her hands. She turned when she heard the sound of the door. Her face lit up.

"T'Pol!"

"Ensign"

Hoshi had been rushing to the Vulcan, stopped hesitantly when she heard the formal salutation, then she threw her reservations to the wind and closed the distance to grab T'Pol in a bear hug. The Vulcan had anticipated the physical contact and bore it stiffly but with grace, shields fully up.

"I was so worried about you!" Hoshi exclaimed.

"There was no _

"Oh, come one! I was fine as long as I stayed pregnant. But you would have died if we had not gotten out!"

T'Pol knew that she would not be able to prevail against the great billows of effusiveness emanating from the ensign. She resigned herself to the situation and tacked in a different direction.

"The Nint baby?"

"I left him on Dalgort. He's fine" Hoshi replied "Actually, I was thinking about the birth certificate when you came in, trying to figure things out" she raised the litpadd in her hand for T'Pol to see. "They want to know who the mother is and the name of the child."

"What are you going to name him?"

Hoshi stared at the litpadd. She had no wish to name the infant. Naming it would have been recognizing that somehow it was hers, and it was not. It was an invader and she was well rid of it. It was the son of those bastard Nints. A bastards' son… "Bastersun" she coolly stared back at T'Pol. She knew the raised eyebrow she got in return was due to the strangeness of the name from a Human perspective, that T'Pol and everybody else would be completely unaware of the layers of meaning.

"And for the mother?"

Hoshi looked down at the litpadd again. "They left it wide open. I can put in any name I want and that person will become the actual mother in the books." She smiled at T'Pol, her eyes twinkling "Fascinating, don't you think?" She paused, seemed to stare within herself "I can leave it blank and they'll fill it up with people from a list, who are looking to adopt. Or I could actually leave my name in there and give every one of those Nint bureaucrats a heart attack for years to come."

"Does that mean you will resign your commission with Starfleet?"

Hoshi could only stare at the Vulcan, jaw agape. Sometimes the woman had the strangest notions, she swore. "Of course not!" she exclaimed, as if that had ever even been a question. "I have my own thoughts." Hoshi passed her hand through her short hair, ruefully noting it would take at least five months before she could play with it again. "Someone on the planet" she quickly added.

T'Pol nodded. "That is welcome news." Silence settled like a blanket over the two women. After a while T'Pol asked "How are you doing, Hoshi?"

Hoshi laughed a short laugh, remembering the times when T'Pol had asked the question and she had no answer. She turned to the viewscreen, looking over the planet below, then turned back to T'Pol. "I am fine."

She turned back towards the window "You know, I just got a long message from Malcolm. I told him what happened, kind of wanted to see if that would change things for him." T'Pol waited. She had heard many stories about Lieutenant Reed over the past few months, and while Starfleet regulations on fraternizing were clear, it would have seemed hypocritical to be the one bringing them up. Hoshi chuckled, her eyes wet with tears "He didn't even figure out what I was getting at until the end of his message. That's when he said he couldn't see how that would have anything to do with anything." She stopped, staring at the starfield, her eyes moist.

She sniffled, smiled at T'Pol "You know, it's true, I am fine. I've been talking with Phlox, that has helped a lot. Trip also came by, he's a good guy" she stole a glance at T'Pol, who remained motionless. "The life I've had with Starfleet so far has been beyond my wildest dreams. Some parts may not have been so good, but overall I wouldn't trade any of it. All of this" she gestured at the planet through the window "was a nightmare, but now it's over, I can go back to where I was before, to who I was before. I – am – fine."


	35. Epilogue

Hoshi sat silently in the shuttle bringing them back to Enterprise, lost in her thoughts as she looked through the front screen at the velvet of space. It would be a few more hours before they met up with Enterprise. Phlox was sitting next to the pilot, exclaiming at the beauty of each random star that happened to cross their path of vision. Hoshi smiled at the doctor's enthusiasm. She felt like an old soul.

T'Pol was seated on the rear bench in front of her, check that, T'Pol and Trip were seated on the rear bench. They were not talking but Hoshi was feeling the special hum in the back of her skull that told her the Vulcan was at rest. She wished the same could be said of her. Instead, she was on tenterhooks. They were going to land on Enterprise in a matter of hours, and then what? Could she go back to being Ensign Hoshi? What about Malcolm? Would he even recognize her, she felt she had changed so much. And then would he change his mind? Could life go back to normal again? Was she a monster that she had left the Nint child behind? She quickly chased the thought off – he would be better off, and she knew it.

The shuttle finally landed in the shuttlebay, and the hatch opened. Hoshi cringed inwardly. She didn't want to go out and be subjected to everyone's stare. Who was waiting for them? Hopefully, Archer didn't have a whole squadron on hand. She was about done with being escorted by armed phalanxes or cadres of diplomats everywhere she went.

Everyone on board the shuttle was getting up and it was time for her to step out, too. The pilot exited first, followed by Phlox, beaming from ear to ear. Trip and behind him T'Pol were blocking her view of the hangar, but she heard Archer exclaiming in pleasure and she had a sense there were only a few Enterprise people there. Bless Archer for keeping the welcome committee small. Either he had sensed what was appropriate or Phlox had given him a hint.

Trip turned around to help T'Pol step off the shuttle and she accepted his hand matter-of-factly. Hoshi was so shocked at the sight that she forgot she was stepping out herself, and then she was there, standing in the shuttlebay, looking at Archer and Malcolm and a couple more crewmen she couldn't place.

And before she could take the next step, Malcolm had hear in a bear hug, ending with a long and passionate kiss under the open-jawed gapes of Archer, the pilot and the other crewmen, the large smile of Phlox, the lackadaisical acceptance of Trip, and the stone-faced interest of T'Pol. Malcolm finally let go, allowing Hoshi to catch her breath. Her doubts and questions had fled her mind and she couldn't remember what she had been anxious about for the life of her. She looked hesitantly at Archer, who looked up at the ceiling and then cleared his throat.

"Well, huh, let's all pretend we haven't seen anything, shall we? Welcome aboard, Ensign. It's good to have you back." And Archer led the outfit off the shuttlebay so he wouldn't have to notice Malcolm's arm around Hoshi. He needed to write out a communiqué about proper behaviors between the ranks, anyway.

Trip winked at Hoshi as he and T'Pol nonchalantly sped ahead of them, T'Pol as stolid as always. And Hoshi suddenly clued in that the place they were hurrying to was not the bridge. She turned and smiled at Malcolm. Yes, everything was going to be all right.

xx

T'Pol looked at the two padds on her desk, almost copies of each other. One was going to Starfleet, the other to Vulcan, with ten additional layers of detail. It had taken close to two weeks to write her and Hoshi's joint report detailing the past six months and now it was up to Starfleet and Vulcan to address what needed addressing with the Dalgorts. Even if Hoshi could bear witness to the events, it was impossible for her as a Vulcan citizen to appear in front of the Overarching Council because Vulcan had not lifted its moratorium on the planet. Her report would provide a framework of sort for the upcoming lengthy negotiations between Vulcan and the Overarching Council to see the embargo lifted. She expected there would eventually be a softening of Vulcan's position, once the situation with the Arumids was addressed and measures put into place so that what had happened could never happen again. Though probabilities were that it eventually would, given Dalgort civilizations.

Starfleet would play its usual role as mediator in the process, explaining to Dalgort why they didn't want a travel prohibition to be enshrined on Vulcan star charts and advocating on behalf of Dalgort in trying to get Vulcan to lighten its opprobrium. What happened afterwards was in the hands of the diplomats. She and Hoshi had been two specks of dust in the currents of history.

As usual the universe moved in unfathomable ways. Their plight was what had led to the discovery of the Nints' treatment of the Arumids. It was a small but important reward for what they had to endure.

xx

Enoikoawn tried to placate Enodreiwn, he could tell how nervous she was, and her nervousness was making him nervous. To be summoned by the Overarching Council was no small matter, especially when one was a mountain Nint, regarded as somewhat unsophisticated and backward even by Nint people.

They were in the hoverport, waiting for the hovercraft to Verkael. Enoikoawn had a hard time believing he was there so soon after he had helped the aliens escape. Even though he himself had not been summoned by the Council, he had told Enoidreiwn he would go with her to share whatever fate awaited her.

Knowing the Council, knowing the Nint government, and knowing the Verkaels, anything was possible. It could be that one or both of them would be thrown in jail the minute they landed or it could be that they would be handed back to the Nints as spies. It could even be that she was awarded a medal for hosting the aliens. No matter what plight was awaiting them, running away was not an option for they had nowhere to run to. So they had agreed they would both go.

The flight was uneventful and they had encountered no problems with the pre-flight inspection. They both knew which answers to give to the 500 questions and didn't have to be taken aside for a manual physical examination, the scanners would show they were Nints through and through. As the hovercraft neared Verkael, Enodreiwn's anxiety increased and he grabbed her hand, trying to help her regain some measure of calm and to bring her mane down a little.

Upon their arrival, they were collected by official-looking Verkaels and whisked to the Council chambers. Only a few representatives were present in the cavernous space, and they both stood in front of the semi-circle of dignitaries, feeling very small and impressed. Enoikoawn was given leave to sit while Enodreiwn was asked to remain standing before the Council.

All members of the Council were looking at her with interest, it was not often they got to meet actual Nints. The Verkael representative to the Council got up and asked her Nint counterpart to lead the ceremony. He stood up in turn and had Enodreiwn answer a few questions. She did it hesitantly, mane standing high. Then the Nint representative asked one more question and Enodreiwn looked at Enoikoawn in a panic when she recognized the fake Nint name they had given Aw-Shee.

The fear that rose through her prevented her from hearing the next part, there was a roar in her head that was muffling the sounds in the chamber and she had no idea what the Nint representative said. Then a courier came into the room with a bundle in one hand and a litpadd in the other. She saw as she turned to him that Enoikoawn was grinning, an incongruous sight, and she tried to fathom what was going on through the noise pressing on her temples. The Nint took the package from the courier and approached her, ceremoniously thrusting both at her.

She grabbed them as best she could. The bundle wriggled and she almost dropped it, heard the Verkael representative urging her "Don't drop it!" She realized that the bundle was moving, looked down at it straight into a small Nint face staring back at her. She looked up and at the litpadd in her hand, uncomprehending. Then the representatives were congratulating her, and Enoikoawn was at her side, an arm around her waist, leaning over her shoulder to look at the bundle, and she looked up at him with puzzlement, and he said "It looks like we have a brand new baby" and that was when it became real, when the noise in her head was replaced with the real noise in the room, and she looked with shock and amazement at the baby in her arms and decoded the litpadd that said she was the mother of the child name Bastersun, born a fortnight before on Verkael, the first Nint to be born on Verkael in many long years.

She cooed gently at him and started humming to it, mindless of the tears washing off her face onto his head. They were tears of happiness.

THE END

 _This has become one of my favorite stories. I wrote and published the first chapter on a whim and then realized I may have overreached as I didn't really have a story to back it up. It took a lot of work but it was worth it._

 _I am immensely grateful to all my reviewers, as always._

 _Thank you._


End file.
